The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy
by Little Witch1
Summary: ...and His Accomplice Hermione Granger. DH AU. Short chapters. Two people, dissatisfied with their roles in the war, decide to make a change.
1. Chapter 1

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 1

It's some time before September, trunk all packed and robes freshly pressed, when Draco Malfoy has what can only be described as an epiphany. He's standing at the foot of his bed, hand poised to drop a newly-bought textbook in the trunk with the rest of his school supplies, when it hits him, like lightening, like a hex, like Granger's slap in third year.

This is all bullshit.

All of it: going back to school, for a false seventh year; false because of the looks on other people's faces, different from what they actually feel inside; false because the Carrow's can't teach and exams won't mean anything and he almost fucking killed a man, and everyone will be too afraid, of Snape and the Dark Lord and, even, of himself, that they won't dare say anything about it. It will be like it never happened and, surprisingly, Draco finds that he isn't okay with that.

Tossing the textbook on his bed, he rummages around on his shelves for another, before grabbing his soft school satchel and waving his wand over it in loops and figure eights and diamonds. When he's done, he shoves all his clothes and what gold he has on hand inside the bottomless bag, pulling it over his shoulder and grabbing his broom. The wind is cold, colder than it should be for this time of year, pouring through the open window, and he can feel his nose start to run. The wood of the broomstick feels unnaturally hard beneath his hand. His throat feels tight.

He jumps.

* * *

In the woods, the leaves are changing, trees bleeding from green to red and yellow and warm brown. The air is crisp. The sky is blue.

Hermione Granger is hungry.

They've been on the run since July, with little food and not much shelter, because even a magical tent is still a tent, in the end, and no matter how many spells she casts she can still feel the night wind creeping through the seams. But that's her job, along with figuring out what forest foods are safe to eat, and keeping track of money, and looking at the map, and reading that damn book, over and over until her eyes feel like they'll pop out and run off in protest.

She hates it.

Not to say that Harry and Ron are having a great time. They're just as tired, just as hungry, but their focus seems to overcome it; the Greater Good, important enough for capitols. She feels weaker, feels smaller, for not letting duty and honour and everything else fill her up when food can't, but, then, they don't have her task. Her Dumbledore-appointed duty. They don't have to scan a children's book for hours and hours, wondering if it's going to mean anything and coming to the conclusion that, no, it won't. The book is shit. Dumbledore was crazy.

And she's getting out of here.

* * *

Blanket Disclaimer:

I own nothing. Never have, never will.


	2. Chapter 2

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 2

It's not a long flight from Wiltshire to London, but the landscape soon becomes thick with twisting roadways and those metal muggle vehicles, and in the distance he can see London looming, tall and white and full of people who would have an aneurism to see him on a broom. He sets down behind some bushes, shrinks his broom and pockets it, and watches as muggles move in and out of the road-side restaurant, fiddle around with their vehicles and maneuver them towards the city.

There's a large vehicle, covered in tarps, and he slips inside and settles down amongst the crates of what he discovers is disassembled furniture. The ride is bumpy, and there are times when Draco isn't sure they've stopped for good and almost leaps out, but eventually the vehicle comes to a rest. He can hear the driver opening his door, getting out, snorting; something makes a jangling sound—keys or coins or a heavy belt buckle. Cautiously, Draco lifts the edge of a tarp, flattening himself against the floor and peering out. The wide, denim-covered rear of the driver is moving away.

Thankfully, they're not too far from the city centre, in an alley behind a furniture shop, and Draco runs in the opposite direction of the driver, so fast that when he hits the pavement he almost smacks into an old woman and her yappy dog.

"Sorry," Draco says, flashing her a smile. The old woman smiles back, and her dog yaps, and Draco shoves his hands in his pockets and strolls away. To Piccadilly Circus. To the West End. To Trafalgar Square. Anywhere, so long as wizards won't be there.

* * *

Saying she's going to leave, and actually leaving, are two very different animals. It's November, and after the disastrous turn at the Ministry of Magic, Hermione is more determined than ever to leave. They aren't getting anywhere, except in to more scrapes that seem to escalate in danger by the day, and she knows—because they aren't fully trained, because their minds are fogged by hunger, because _they_ _have no proper plan_—that one day, one of them is going to die.

She finds it rather telling that when her first thought is about how she doesn't want to die, she doesn't feel all that bad about it. Selfishness, she has found, isn't as bad as she thought.

"This isn't working," she finally says, during dinner that isn't dinner, because three wild mushrooms aren't a meal.

"What do you mean?" Harry asks.

"This, us," she waves her hands around, at their sad little campsite, "this whole stupid _quest_ that Dumbledore sent us on. It's disorganized. It's second rate. And it's going to kill us, either by Death Eaters or because I just get too damn hungry and eat the two of you."

"Cannibalism, Hermione?" Harry smiles.

"Are you even listening to me?"

"'Course we are," Ron says. "But Dumbledore was a smart bloke. Why shouldn't we do as he says?"

"Because smart as he was, he was almost a manipulative bastard who kept his cards too close to his chest, and didn't seem to mind all that much when people died for it." She sees Harry swallow hard. "Harry, you should know. If Dumbledore had been up front with you, this whole…thing may be over by now. Hell, Voldemort may not even have been resurrected if he was more honest about the horcruxes."

"We don't know that," Harry says softly, squirming.

"Bullshit."

Harry looks at his hands, and Ron looks in to the trees, and she can see how it is. Dumbledore will forever be wise and caring and happily mad, and despite Hermione's brains, she will always come in second to a dead man with an Order of Merlin.

"So that's it; you're leaving?" Ron says as he watches her throw her few clothes and toiletries in to her beaded bag.

"Yep," she says.

"You're just going to desert us?"

"Yeah."

"Well…you can't!" he exclaims, leaping to his feet.

"In a minute, you'll find that I can."

"You can't just abandon us! We need you!"

"No, you don't. Not when you won't listen to me. And I'm not about to stand idly by, going fucking _treasure hunting_, when I could be doing something useful."

"You're useful to us."

She can hear the plaintive sound in his voice, and she knows then that if she leaves now there is no future for them. No dating, no marriage, no children. All her childhood hopes are wrapped up in this fruitless search, and if she leaves it, she leaves them behind too. She'll choose adulthood, planning and strategy and real, honest war, over the adventure and mystery of the years before. And adulthood has no place for her love for Ron Weasley.

"Don't die," she says, and apparates away.


	3. Chapter 3

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 3

The thrill of being on his own only lasts as long as it takes for breakfast to digest. By midday, he's standing in Piccadilly Circus, stomach rumbling, and no viable currency to pay for food.

He sighs. Diagon Alley or bust, it seems.

However, Draco is not stupid, and won't just waltz through the Leaky Cauldron with his spun-gold hair and striking profile. A quick wave of his wand, in an alley two blocks from the pub, gives him dark hair and brown eyes and too-tanned skin (which seems to be popular with muggles), and he strides through the pub and into the Alley, to Gringotts and its gilded front desk.

Goblins are easy to bribe. A quarter of his vault is now in muggle pounds. He wonders if ten thousand makes him rich, in that world.

He stuffs most of it in his satchel, lost in the black depths, just in case.

It's only when he's back in muggle London that he notices how tight his chest has become, how ill his breathing, how his hands shake. He goes in to a café and orders a sandwich and strong coffee, cupping his hands around the mug and letting the warmth seep through his fingers.

It takes him an hour to realize he forgot to take the glamour off.

* * *

Out of the forest and by the motorway, Hermione hitchhikes to her parents' empty house, creeping in through the back and hoping the neighbours won't see. She's supposed to be in school, after all, and her parents' mail has been piling up on the front stoop. She can't answer questions. She can't look in to prying eyes.

The first thing she does is take a shower. She scrubs her skin hard and sighs at the feel of a razor against her legs, her under arms. She stands under the spray, relishing in the pound of water, washing away grime that collects no matter how many cleaning charms you apply.

She sleeps all day and all night, and for breakfast she gorges herself on tinned fruit, pears and peaches and pineapple, until she feels sick. After a lie down on the sofa, she empties her beaded bag and does her laundry. She slips out of the house in the afternoon to buy bread and a pint of milk. She makes beans on toast for dinner, and afterwards, with the shadows growing long and the house turning cold, she takes out quill and parchment and writes out everything she knows about Lord Voldemort.


	4. Chapter 4

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 4

Draco lives, first, in a hotel. He's on the top floor, looking out on to the roofs of other hotels, houses and flats; their many chimneys, and the shingles dotted with moss. He has breakfast in the dining room every morning, and is surprised at how well the muggles get on without magic, without house elves. Maids clean his room every day, and every day it's perfect. Somehow luggage and parcels and cleaning products are brought up and down the small, winding stair without incident. Breakfast is always prompt, although the eggs are a little runny. They're a marvel, these muggles, really. He forgets why he's supposed to hate them.

After breakfast, he buys a newspaper, and spends an hour on a bench in Hyde Park reading it cover to cover. He doesn't see much difference from the Daily Prophet, really. It's the same trash: politicians bungling things in office and celebrities having affairs and sports teams rallying to be on top. They're even at war, although it's far from home, and from what he's starting to gather, possibly more dangerous than his—_the other war_ could be.

He buys a book about warfare in the twentieth century, and is horrified by what he finds. So much happening in the world, and he's been unaware of it. Ignorant, and happily so, for far too long. He buys more books.

Draco has never been one to think about expenses too much, but with limited funds and a hotel bill creeping up, he checks out and goes to a hostel a few blocks over. It's cramped and sweaty, and one night someone tries to steal his satchel from under his head. Draco almost breaks the guy's arm. No one tries to steal from him again.

"You a student?"

Draco looks up from where he's shoving a dirty shirt in to his bag to find a muggle with dreadlocks and brightly-coloured hiking clothes staring down at him.

"Excuse me?" Draco says.

"Are you a student? You look kind of studenty."

"Uh, no," he lies.

"You sound English. What are you doing here, then?"

"Just…hanging around," is his lame answer. But what else can he say? Not the truth, not that most probably he has very dangerous and extremely unhinged people searching for him, and the only place he is safe is a world away from them. A world that happens to be right next door.

"Yeah?" The muggle lifts a pierced eyebrow.

"No, I'm actually on the run. Wanted in six countries," Draco drawls.

For a minute, there is silence. Then, the muggle laughs, loud and long and claps Draco's shoulder.

"Good one mate. I'm Tristan. Just finished a stint in Glasgow Uni. Taking a gap year, myself," the muggle says, smiling.

"What did you study?"

"Modernities. Fucking useless."

That night, Tristan takes Draco out for a pint, where he meets Maggie and Chris and Gaz, backpackers who have just finished a tour of Ireland and are resting and stocking up on language guides before moving on to France. Then Germany, and Austria and Romania; Greece and Turkey and a plane ride to Tibet.

Three pints in, Draco gets a crash course in communism.

* * *

Hermione orders books through the post under a fake name, and not all of them are from Flourish and Blotts. Some are dark and dangerous, and she can see Molly Weasley's pursed lips and wagging finger in her mind's eye, but finds she doesn't care like she used to. Dark texts have a place in this world, too. Not everything is black and white, storm clouds and sunshine, evil and good. And sitting in a shade of grey is actually rather nice.

She maps out Voldemort's entire life, including her own conjecture where book knowledge fails. She tacks the scrolls up on the wall next to the dining room table, using them as a reference as she traces the whereabouts of Founders artifacts. The diary, the locket, the Hufflepuff cup; a lost diadem seems likely, as does that obscenely large snake. Voldemort was a busy boy, busy and clever, but not as clever as her, although it doesn't take a genius to figure out that souls leave marks, marks you can feel, marks that cause pain and insight, and she drops her head to the table as it all coalesces inside her brain.

"Oh fuck," she says.

Because no mark is as meaningful as a lightning bolt scar.

An hour later, Hermione decides to get very drunk, and takes the train in to London with a hundred pounds in her pocket and the name of a good hostel on a scrap of parchment. She goes to a pub, with its festive Christmas décor, full of throbbing bodies on a Friday night. She orders whiskey, neat. The bar top is sticky, the lights low.

It's the last place she thought she would find Draco Malfoy.

* * *

Author's Note

No offence meant to anyone studying Modernities.


	5. Chapter 5

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 5

"Draco. Draco. Draaaaaaaaaaaaco."

"What?"

"Come out with us."

Tristan and the others have moved on (to Munich, so says their last postcard) and so has Draco. Tired of the hostel, and oddly depressed at four ill-kempt muggles departing, he moved to a bedsit with one of Tristan's friends. Joe collects bandanas, and has been alternating between red and green since December started. He plays the banjo on street corners and is extremely cheerful for someone so poor. Draco's nose used to turn up at that, poor people, like the Weasley's and their patched clothes. But now he sees that maybe it wasn't that they were poor, at least monetarily. Maybe it was the way they carried themselves, always ashamed of their threadbare robes, even when their smiles were wide. Joe wears his fraying hoodie like silk dress robes, his old trainers like dragon-hide boots. He is never sorry that sometimes he can't afford tea. And, neither is Draco.

"Where?"

Wet, slushy snow is falling. Looking out the window to the street, Draco can see people bundled up in fur-trimmed coats and thick suede boots. His toes curl in their shoes. He dips his hand in a drawer for a second pair of socks.

"Just the pub round the corner. The guys and I thought, you know, bit of Christmas cheer."

"Don't you have to work?"

Starving artist though he is, Joe works part time at a Tesco. Not much, but the rent gets paid, at least.

"Nah, switched shifts. You in?"

Draco thinks about what he would do otherwise, and comes up empty. No schoolwork, no family, no Christmas shopping. No job, either, since he doesn't have a CV or a national insurance card or even a birth certificate muggles would recognize.

"Sure," he says.

The pub is small and packed, and Draco and Joe squeeze in to a booth beside some of Joe's friends. One works with him at Tesco, another paints; one is a poet, and the last a part-time student working three jobs who is almost asleep in his seat.

"Let me see," Malcolm, the painter, says, standing and pointing at each person in turn. "Guiness, Guiness, Red Stripe, Magners, G and T, and whiskey, neat for Draco 'Posh Spice' Malfoy."

"Fuck off," Draco says.

"Love you too."

Malcolm pushes through the crowd, and Draco shrugs out of his coat, that's thin and practically useless without a warming charm, although those are few and far between. A social experiment, he says, sometimes, although mostly it's for fear of having his wand traced.

"Here you go boys," Malcolm says, depositing their drinks in two shifts. "So, turns out Draco here isn't the only fancy trousers in this place."

"Do tell," Colin, the poet, says.

"A cute little bird up at the bar ordered the same thing. Red jumper. Nice tits."

All six men crane their necks and find her, the lone woman on a stool, hair falling wild down her back. She looks thin, almost too thin.

"Nice. Do you think we can get her to turn around?" Joe says.

"Dunno," Malcolm mutters.

They don't need to. The girl half turns to stop her scarf from falling to the floor, and Draco almost has a heart attack.

"Oh shit," he breathes, fear clawing at his chest. He needs to leave, but he feels cemented to his seat.

"You know her?" Joe asks.

Her head lifts, hair falling across her face. She blows it away and her eyes widen, locked on Draco's.

It's like time has slowed, their movements sluggish, like moving through water. Simultaneously, Draco staggers to his feet and tries to push passed his friends, while Hermione Granger elbows her way through the crowd. She makes it to the table before he can bolt, her coat and drink forgotten. She _is_ too thin, he thinks, and then wonders why he cares.

"Malfoy," she says, like a curse.

"Granger," Draco says, jaw tight.

"Old girlfriend?" Malcolm says, and Joe kicks him under the table.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she asks.

"That's my line," he says.

"Shouldn't you be, I don't know, rotting in a snake den somewhere?"

"Shouldn't you be dead?"

"Auntie let you out for Christmas?"

"Potter dead in a ditch?"

"Bastard."

"Cunt."

They're nose to nose, leaning over the table and breathing heavily. He can count the freckles on her cheeks and see the circles under her eyes, eyes that look as dead as he feels, sometimes. It's been a few minutes, and no Potter or Weasley have come to beat him to death, so she's alone. Alone in London so near Christmas, when war is raging, and he wonders why that is. Does the Order know he's here? Is she spying on him?

No.

He can see it, in the flecks of gold in her irises, in the spidery red lines around them. Like meets like.

"Get your coat," he says.

"What the hell makes you think—" she starts.

"Where are Potter and Weasley?"

She's silent, and he can feel guilt, palpable guilt like steam rising off her skin to brush his face.

"Get your coat," he repeats, and she does.

He leaves the booth and slips on his coat and feels…different. For months, he's been Draco Malfoy, a wealthy dropout with no A-Levels and no desire for work, who buries himself in books for fun and is good for a drink and a joint and a laugh. Now, he still is all those things, but he is also Draco Malfoy again, almost-murderer and Death Eater and Slytherin exemplified.

"I'll see you later," he says to his friends. They nod, curious but silent.

Together, he and Hermione Granger walk out the door.


	6. Chapter 6

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 6

Draco takes her to a bench next to the Thames. Wind whips off the river to batter her face, and she pulls her scarf up near her lips. Beside her, she can see Draco suppressing shivers, and wonders if he's cast a warming charm. His coat doesn't look fit for winter, not even with the hoddie and jumper she can see layered through the open throat.

"You're going to make yourself sick," she says.

"Talking to you? Naturally," he says, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and hunching his shoulders.

"Here." She lifts her wand from her pocket, but before she can open her mouth he's off the bench and in front of her, in a dueling stance with his wand pointed between her eyes.

"Put it down," he growls.

"I was just going to—"

"Put it down or you're ending up in the river, Granger."

His eyes are wild, like a cornered animal, a wolf or a fox or a dog let off the leash. Something that will fight back; something that will fight for its freedom.

She puts her wand away.

"I was going to cast a warming charm. You're freezing," she explains.

He sniffs, pocketing his own wand. "Don't need it."

He sits beside her again, and it's the closest she's ever been to him. She can feel him shivering, his arm brushing against hers. She can smell him, cold skin and pot and beer. She has the absurd urge to hug him.

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

"Freezing my bollocks off."

"Don't be a smartarse," she snaps. "What are you doing in muggle London?"

For a minute, he looks like he wants to mouth off to her again. Probably to fill some yearly quota he's been lax on. Instead, he licks his lips and hangs his head.

"I left the Manor in September. I can't—won't—go back."

"Why?"

He lifts his head and stares at her, so long and hard she has to stop herself from squirming. "The same reason you left Potter and Weasley."

"It's all crap," she whispers.

"Exactly."

There are lights twinkling from across the water, offices full of people working late, pubs full of revelers, and hotels full of couples on romantic holidays; family paying visits; children and parents and grandparents safe and warm. Something swells inside, and Hermione isn't sure what it is, envy or hate. They feel so similar.

"The muggles can kill all of us with a pine cone, and no one knows it," Draco says, softly, evenly. "A bomb the size of a pine cone, dropped in Diagon Alley, and the Alley is gone. We think they're nothing, we're taught that they're _nothing_; stupid and useless and as dangerous as a slug. But they have done things to each other that make wizards look like children playing pretend."

"Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Hermione murmurs.

"The Holocaust."

"Operation Desert Storm."

"Vietnam."

Tentatively, Draco laces his fingers through her own. She can feel the cold of his skin seep through her glove.

"So let's make sure the wizards know," she says, turning to him. His cheeks are as red as apples, once flat eyes glittering, and she knows, _knows_ it's not a reflection of the lights.

"See, that's why people say you're smart."


	7. Chapter 7

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 7

"You're a git, you know that?" Hermione says, smacking his arm but not releasing his hand.

"Yes, yes I do," he says. Like he needs to be told.

He doesn't know why he took her hand. Maybe it's the cold getting to him; hypothermia-induced delirium causing him to think it would be a good idea to hold Hermione Granger's hand. He pointedly ignores how nice it feels, how soft her leather glove is, how small her fingers.

"Why are you in muggle London, Granger?" he asks.

"Freezing my arse off," she says, smirking, and he finds it lovely.

He hopes he's drunk.

"Cute, Granger, very cute. But seriously."

She sighs heavily, but doesn't look away from him. "Voldemort," (he doesn't flinch and he's proud of it), "split is soul in to seven pieces: six horcruxes and himself."

"Holy shit," he breathes.

"No kidding. Harry, Ron and I were supposed to go look for them, but…we had no plan. We only managed to find one through luck, and it's just…I couldn't work like that. I knew we were going to fail." She rubs her eyes with the back of her free hand. "Anyway, I've been doing more thorough research, using Voldemort's personal history as the main resource. Today, I figured out what one of his horcruxes was. The thing is, I'm not even sure if it was meant to be a horcrux, which is good for us since we can use that somehow, although it means there are seven horcruxes instead of six, but…I wanted to get very, very drunk."

"What's the horcrux?" Draco asks, although the answer is already niggling the back of his brain. After all, what else would force the sensible Miss Granger to drink?

"Harry."

Draco feels like someone has punched him in the gut. All the air in his lungs comes out in one big whoosh. "Fuck."

"Yeah."

Potter is a horcrux. Saint Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived-To-Fuck-Everything-Up-For-Him has a piece of the Dark Lord's soul stashed inside his scrawny body, and probably isn't even aware of it. That's a kind of oblivious there isn't even a word for. Yet. Draco will think of one. It's the least he can do.

He squeezes Hermione's hand.

"Do you still want to get drunk?" he asks.

"I don't know," she says.

He tugs her up. "I have a better idea."

* * *

He holds her hand the whole way to his flat, and she's not sure why. She's also not sure why she doesn't yank it back. They're not friends, they're not lovers, but something about his hand in hers feels right, in this moment, on this night, climbing the stairs to his flat. Paint is peeling off the walls and empty cigarette packets litter the steps, but it's warm. Warmer than her parents house, where she has to sleep under four blankets or risk an illness she can't afford.

"This is where you live?" she says.

"Yep. Home sweet home."

He opens the door and drags her inside, and the first thing she sees is a man in a bandana stretched out on a mattress, a woman with shorn blonde hair giving him a blow job.

"Shit," Draco says, swiping a hand across his eyes.

"Jesus, mate," the man says. The woman lifts her head and smiles, unperturbed.

"Sorry," Draco mutters, grabbing a leather satchel and rummaging through it.

"You want to knock next time?" the man asks.

"I live here," Draco says.

"Yeah, well…fuck, just leave for a bit, all right?"

"Glad to." Draco shoves the satchel under his arm and tugs on her hand.

"Your boyfriend's cute," the blonde says.

"He's…uh…thanks," Hermione stutters.

In the hall with the door shut, Draco slumps down on the steps. She moves with him.

"Does that happen often?" she asks.

"Ish."

Suddenly, she cans see him, in the middle of the night wrapped in a blanket or hunched over in his coat, waiting in the hall for his flatmate to get off so he can go to sleep. In those moments, he's not a wizard or a criminal or the heir to a splintering legacy, he's just a teenager, trembling with cold and, maybe, envious need. Something sharp and hot lances through her body. She ignores it.

For the first time in what must be hours, Draco lets go of her hand to open his satchel. Her hand feels cold and empty and alien. She shakes it out, watching as he drops a plastic baggie and a lighter on his lap.

"How did you get that?" she asks, because for some reason, while she can see him—and has—making shady deals for objects dark and dangerously illegal, buying drugs just won't form a picture in her head.

"Who says _I_ got it?" He jerks his head towards his front door.

"Ah," she says.

He rolls a joint, neatly, precisely, the touch of his thin fingers delicate and careful. Bringing it to his lips, he lights it and inhales deeply. He passes it to her. She takes a drag and feels her head swim.

"Thanks," she says.

They pass it back and forth, reclining on the steps, their sides pressing together from shoulder to knee. The ceiling is watermarked, she notices.

"So…what do we, you know, _do_?" she asks, stubbing out the joint and plucking the second one from between his lips to light it herself.

"Uh…what?" He frowns.

"We," she croaks, before releasing a stream of smoke, like a dragon. Dragon. Draco. Dragons smoke, Draco's don't. Except…they do, but…it's not the same…and… "I'm confused," she says.

"Me too."

Draco, who is not a dragon but who is at the same time, takes a drag and hands it back to her.

"I hate your flat," she announces.

"So do I."

"And your flatmate."

"He's not so bad."

"His girlfriend is nice, though."

"She's not his girlfriend…unless he got one without telling me. And that's just…that's not cool. Not. Cool."

Draco frowns and slumps and drops his head on her shoulder.

"Oh." She flicks ash on the curling metal railing, and then presses the joint to Draco's mouth. He inhales. "She thought I was your girlfriend."

"Oh," he says.

And that's it, and for some reason she thinks there should be more, yelling or swearing or name-calling, and when there isn't she feels relieved and doesn't know why.

They finish the joint, and it's then, watching Draco stub it out, smoke swirling in the air, that she decides he's coming home with her. He can't live here.

"What are you thinking?" he asks.

She has no idea.


	8. Chapter 8

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 8

For the first time in her life, when Hermione wakes up, she doesn't know where she is.

There's a heavy weight across her waist and hair in her mouth, sunlight stabbing her in the eye and something hard pushing against her belly.

She feels like death.

Cracking her eyes open, she notices a hand, attached to an arm which is slung over her waist. Her coat-covered waist, as all her clothes, right down to her shoes, are still on. Her belt buckle is digging in to her gut. Propping herself on one arm, she looks around. She's in Draco's flat.

"Morning," someone says. It's the man from last night, mostly clothed with the blonde sprawled across him.

"Morning," Hermione says.

"Sorry 'bout last night. Didn't think Draco would be back, to be honest. You were the first girl he's ever left a pub with." He runs a hand through his hair, dislodging the bandana. "And you two were kinda intense."

"Yeah," she says.

The man pulls himself out of bed, in a hoodie and boxers and wool socks. He shuffles over to a pile of clothes and drags out jeans that probably haven't seen a washing machine in months.

"I'm Joe, by the way," he says.

"Hermione."

"That's…uh, hold on…" Joe pulls on his jeans, rubs sleep out of his eyes, and puts a new bandana on. Red paisley, this time. "That's Karris. With a K." He points at the blonde.

"Oh."

Karris with a K murmurs in her sleep, shifting and pushing the blanket down like a child. Her tank-top is practically see-through, nipples small and erect in the chill room. Joe pulls the blanket back up.

"How do you know Draco?" he asks.

"We went to school together," she tells him.

"You drop out, too?"

"Uh, yeah."

"You're in good company, then. Left school at sixteen. Creative differences with some of my teachers, the wankers."

Hermione snorts and shifts, feeling her bladder unpleasantly full, and her skin oily and too hot. She cringes and loosens her scarf. It doesn't help. Behind her, Draco moves and mutters and squeezes her hips. He looks peaceful.

"Draco," she says, shaking him. "Draco, wake up."

He groans.

"Wake. Up." She pushes him, hard, rolling him off and away to smack into the wall.

"What. The. Fuck," he groans.

"Morning sunshine."

"I hate you, Granger."

"I hate you too."

"You two are so strange," Joe says.

"Fuck off," Draco moans, pushing himself on to all fours and crawling to the end of the bed. "What's going on?"

"Well, Joe and I were getting to know one another, and you were sleeping the day away," Hermione explains.

"And why did you have to ruin it?"

"I'm nice that way."

Draco stands, stretching and peeling off his coat and hoodie and jumper. Standing there in a t-shirt, he scans the room before picking new clothes from the top of a bedside table. Pulling them on, she manages to catch a glimpse of something dark on his left arm.

"So, you do have it," she says.

He pauses, green hoodie half on, before nodding. "Yeah."

"Have what?" Joe asks.

Hermione starts. She forgot he was there. "Uh," she says.

"You mean that tattoo? Freaky shit."

Draco finishes dressing, and Hermione stands, grabbing his satchel and throwing his discarded clothes inside.

"What are you doing?" Draco asks.

"Packing."

"Because…"

"Because you're coming to live with me."

He blinks.

"How many brain cells did you kill last night?"

"Ha ha." She grabs a white shirt with a wizarding label and tosses it in the bag. "We have work to do. Can't do it if you're in London and I'm in Reading."

"Reading?"

"Yes."

She moves around him, throwing anything that looks remotely like it could belong to him in the satchel, and holding it up for a shake or nod of his head when she's not sure. He doesn't have much, and she's finished quickly.

"All right, let's go," she says.

"You bossy little—"

"I'm right and you know it," she tells him. "After all, when have you ever known me to be wrong?"

She can see him agreeing, and she can tell he hates it.

"So, you're going?" Joe asks, plopping down on his bed. Karris doesn't wake.

"Looks like," Draco says.

Joe stuffs his hands in his pockets and takes out a crumpled piece of paper, looks around, and plucks a pen from underneath a pair of dirty socks.

"Here's Malcolm's number. I'll get a new phone, eventually, but if you want to…I dunno…just call him. We'll work something out," Joe says, shoving the paper with a mobile number scrawled across it into Draco's hand.

Draco stares at it a moment, hand steady, before pocketing it.

"Well, see you later, mate," Joe says.

"Yeah, see you."

They embrace, in that masculine way with hands slapping backs and very little time pressed against one another, and Hermione can't help but be amazed. Draco Malfoy is saying goodbye to his muggle flatmate, and it looks like he's going to miss him.

"All right, let's go, Granger. Don't just stand there gaping like a Weasley."

This, she thinks, will end in disaster.


	9. Chapter 9

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 9

Hermione lives in a modest house on a modest street in a modest suburb, with manicured lawns and square shrubs and a street swept clean by the council. It looks above ordinary, and as non-threatening as man can make it. They sneak in through the back.

"Granger, why the fuck are we breaking in to your own house?" he asks, crouching next to a wrought-iron chair while she puts the key in the door and takes down the wards.

"We're not breaking in. I live here."

Inside, it's dark and quiet—too quiet. Draco shivers.

"It's freezing in here. Don't you have heating?"

"No," she says, voice clipped and tense. "I'm going for a shower. The heating charm should keep on the boiler, so you'll be able to have one, too."

She heads upstairs, and Draco decides to snoop. Well, not snoop, exactly, but stare at the bushy-haired little girl, smiling in still photographs. Her father was going gray even when she was born, and her mother is the one with the curls, and they both look so proud of their daughter. There are photos of Hermione winning awards in junior school, on holiday, in her Hogwarts uniform, sans robes (for company's sake, most likely). The colours on her tie, the cut of her jumper, make his chest twinge.

The house is still. Draco flicks a light switch. Nothing happens.

No one has paid the bills, which means Granger hasn't been doing it, but as she's responsible and her parents probably don't enjoy spending winter standing around in the dark, something must be up. Her parents—parents she hasn't mentioned, not even in passing—must be gone. Where, is a good question, and his only answer is upstairs and would hex him if he followed her.

An image of bare skin and water-heavy hair flashes through his head. He swallows hard.

"Your turn," comes her voice, followed by her body, pink and clean and dressed in fresh clothes. She's toweling her hair dry.

"Where are your parents?" he asks.

She freezes, and for a minute he thinks she'll bolt, like a frightened deer. She tosses the towel on the back of the sofa and absently twists a curl round her finger.

"Australia," she says.

"Why?"

"I modified their memories in the summer. They are different people, with different lives, and no daughter. They wanted to go to Australia, so they went."

"Jesus," he sighs.

"There is no war in Australia."

She goes in to the kitchen.

* * *

While Draco bathes, she does his laundry, which is a tad difficult since the bag is bottomless and nothing will come out if it's tipped upside down. Frustrated, she takes everything out, one by one. In addition to clothes, she finds muggle history books and a wad of muggle money, more pot and a squashed pack of cigarettes; wizard texts she's never heard of, a pouch of gold; receipts and coasters with beer logos on them and a photograph. It's muggle, of Draco and the men he was with at the pub last night. They're standing on train tracks that are half-swallowed by weeds and grass. Their arms are out, their eyes bright, smiles wide.

She's never seen him look like that.

"I'd known them two days," he says, breath brushing against her ear. "We went to the East End to visit Tony's cousin; had a few pints and got silly on the way back home."

"You look happy," she says.

He backs away, running a hand through his damp hair and poking his head in the dining room. "You've been busy," he comments.

She closes the washer door and taps it with her wand. "But I can only get so far," she says. "There are only a few sketchy pictures of the Ravenclaw diadem, and I've hit a block with Hufflepuff's cup. Nagini, Voldemort's snake, seems like a logical horcrux, but he keeps her with him all the time, so it will be difficult to destroy. I…don't want to think about Harry, yet."

"I don't want to work for the Order," Draco says.

"Good. Neither do I."

He touches a picture, copied from a textbook by wand, of the diadem. The tip of his finger traces the curves of silver, the swell of gems. "I know this," he says.

"What?"

"I've seen it. In the Room of Requirement. When it's filled with junk and the…the cabinet."

Something grows and bursts in her chest, like an exploding star, flooding her with warmth and light and she throws her arms around him. He stiffens for all of a microsecond before hugging her back, pressing his mouth to her shoulder. She laughs. She can feel him smiling.

"This is going to work," she says.

His smile widens.


	10. Chapter 10

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 10

"I traced the Hufflepuff line down to Hepzibah Smith, who was poisoned by her house elf. She had the cup, but it went missing after she died and her family wasn't able to locate it. Smith's death coincides with Voldemort quitting his job at Borgin and Burkes, so say their ledgers which cost me half of my parents' university fund to take a look at," Hermione tells him.

Draco changed out of the clothes from this morning as soon as the clean ones were dry, and now leans against Hermione's dining room table, staring at her parchment-covered wall. Hermione sits in a chair behind him, narrating.

"After that, there is no mention of Voldemort anywhere for a decade, and the cup never turns up, not even in rumor. Assuming he made it to a horcrux during that time, what would he do with it afterwards?"

"What did he do with the others?"

"The locket was—well, it was supposed to be—in a cave surrounded by Inferi."

"Something just as ostentatious, then?"

"Possibly; but for all that he's a psycho, he is clever, and wouldn't hide every horcrux the same way. The Gaunt ring was left in a shack, the diary was given to your father—"

"I'm sorry, what?"

Draco whirls around and stares at her. His father had a horcrux? Since when? For how long? And was a fragmented piece of that twisted bastard's soul still lurking somewhere in his house?

"Your father had a diary—a horcrux—that he gave to Ginny in second year. Harry destroyed it with a Basilisk fang," she explains, waving her hand like what she just said isn't making his brain implode.

"Back the fuck up, Granger. There…my…and there was…what?"

Hermione sighs and explains, and Draco wonders what exactly he was _doing_ in second year that made him miss all this. In fact, what was he doing the first five years of school, while the girl in front of him was risking her life?

"We are going to have a little chat about your extracurriculars, Granger," he says when she's finished.

"Aw, I didn't know you were interested in S.P.E.W." She smiles sweetly.

"Remind me to…curse your knees or something." He pushes the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Christ my head hurts."

"I'll get you some paracetamol."

A few minutes later, Hermione hands him a small pill and a glass of water.

"You've really got the hang of muggle swearing," she comments, head tilted to one side.

"Can't go around swearing like a wizard, can I? I'd be sectioned."

He sets the glass on the table and looks back at the wall. A cave and a shack and his father, of all people, but his mind whirrs with thought. Before prison, before a botched mission, before before before, his father was in the upper echelon of the Dark Lord's circle. But then, so were other people—other family members in fact. It hits him and cold revulsion slithers down his spine.

"He could have given the cup to another Death Eater," he says, and Hermione stares at him a second.

"Who?"

His head throbs. "My father was one of the favourites—one of the best. But Aunt Bellatrix was better."


	11. Chapter 11

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 11

They go through every possibility for where Bellatrix may have stashed the cup, deciding on the Lestrange vault. Draco isn't sure how guarded it is, can only make conjectures based on the tricks and traps in his own family vault, but nevertheless Hermione is thrilled with their progress.

From there they move to the snake and the locket, and Draco almost throws something when he hears Harry has it round his neck.

"Why the fuck did you leave it with him?" he bellows.

"I…I don't know." And she doesn't. She wasn't thinking about it, when she left. Then, it was just an obscene piece of jewelry that they weren't sure what to do with. Dumbledore's hand, twisted like tree roots, made them reluctant to use any spells on it. "We don't know how to destroy the horcruxes, at least without killing ourselves in the process."

Draco shoots a hand through his hair, and they take a break.

The day passes, talking and hypothesizing and snapping at each other when their thoughts muddle and their heads ache, like weights are pressing against their temples, which, she thinks, isn't wrong. There are lots of weights in their lives.

When shadows creep into the corners of the house, Hermione lights candles and makes dinner. They sit in the living room, plates on the coffee table, Draco telling her stories of his life in London, and Hermione giving him the details of the last six years.

"You could have got yourself killed," he says when she finishes.

"But we didn't." She pops a dried apricot in her mouth.

"Why did you leave, then?" he asks, and she looks away, staring at her hands curling in to the blanket on her lap. "Potter's luck will probably hold. Why leave?"

"I told you, it—"

"Is bullshit, I know. But why?"

She sighs. "Even in first year, we had a plan. There was…order, structure. Now we…I could see us, and we were going to fail. I _can't_ fail. Not at this."

"You have issues, Granger." He steals a dried apple ring off her plate.

"Lucky I'm with you, then."

"Still, I can't believe you three got away with that shit. Totally typical; Potter could probably murder someone in the Great Hall and get away with it."

"Oh like you can talk."

It pops out her mouth without her thinking, and the second she says it she wants to crawl under the sofa. Draco's frozen mid-stretch, eyes briefly horrified and furious, then terribly, heart-wrenchingly blank, because although she meant the first five years, of Snape's flagrant favouritism, there is a man dead under Draco's watch and he's not sitting in a cell.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

"It's fine."

"No it's not. I didn't…I didn't mean _that_, I meant…" She scrubs a hand across her face. So much for being bright.

He pushes his plate away. "This isn't going to work, is it? I'm a murderer, to you. Not even that, I'm a _failed_ murderer. The boy who fucked up."

"No you're not!"

"Granger—"

"Harry was there! He told me what happened! It was an old man or your parents. I would have done the same thing."

He stares at her, eyes hot.

"They're your parents, Draco. You love them. They're why you're here."

"Can't put anything past you; I guess that's why it wasn't death by shot glass when we met last night."

"But it's true."

He exhales, long and low, and in the cold of the room she can see his breath mist. "Sometimes…I still think about my parents. I don't know what's happened to them. They could…" He drags a hand across his face. "I didn't want to do…I left, and I thought I'd never go back. I'd wait out the war, come back and deal with everything after. Or I'd…leave. Go to France or Spain or America, and not have to hear about war ever again. I'd have a nice, safe life. But my parents are still there, in that house, with _him_. Or they could be in unmarked graves, but I don't _know_. And if…if they are alive, I want them to be safe."

She takes his hand, that's cold and stiff, like steel. She squeezes his fingers hard, and after a moment, he squeezes back.

"So," he sniffs, "do you have a plan to educate the pureblood elite, or were you just going to shout at them?"

She smacks him on the arm. That night, he sleeps in the guest bed, and doesn't comment when she tosses three quilts at his head.


	12. Chapter 12

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 12

The next morning, Draco pads downstairs to find that Hermione has dedicated half the dining room wall to their little enlightenment plan. His history books are stacked neatly on the table next to blank parchment and two worn quills, and in the kitchen Hermione putters about making tea.

"No privacy," he mutters, eyeing his books that should be in his satchel. He takes a mug from her hands.

"What?"

"Nothing." He sips his tea. "Find anything interesting?"

"Loads." She smiles. "But we need more, so we're going to the library."

Reading Central Library is a brick building that, frankly, looks rather hideous. Draco's always been a fan of libraries, and spent a fair amount of time loitering in the one at Hogwarts, and in comparison this one is shit. The shelves are metal and the lights are horrendously bright, and it has a smell that wizarding libraries don't have. It's unpleasant, and instead of making him think of thick books bound in leather, ones that are older than the manor, it makes him think of jumpers. Heavy wool ones that itch and are too hot even in Scottish winters. It's stifling.

"Why couldn't we just go to a shop?" he asks, wrinkling his nose.

"Not everyone is made of gold, Malfoy. We commoners borrow most of our books," Hermione says. "Stop whining."

"I am not whining."

"And don't touch the computers."

He stops two feet from one of those miraculous machines he's only ever seen Joe and the others use, and glares at her.

"Spoil sport."

Draco follows her around with his hands shoved in his pockets until she fills his arms with books and tapes, and then drags him back to her house. They spend the rest of the day copying passages with Hermione's wand, since Draco refuses to use his, and listening to music and speeches trickling in from the living room stereo. By evening, the bare space on the wall is covered in photos, song lyrics, and passages from novels and plays. As dinner warms, Hermione takes out a small wireless.

"I listen to this, sometimes," she says, "and it's given me an idea."

She flicks it on and adjusts the station, and when a voice comes on that he recognizes, he finds he has to grip the edge of the table to stop himself from kissing her.

* * *

The muggle part is almost too easy: the wizard bit is harder. Much harder, especially with the plan Hermione has simmering in her synapses. She broaches it cautiously, carefully. It wouldn't do to blurt it out and have Draco hex her with her own wand.

"I know how we can get in to the Lestrange vault," she says.

"What, you're secretly adopted and have my aunt's blood running through your veins?"

"No, but there are those who do."

She watches it dawn on him, at least part of it, and he frowns so fiercely it's a wonder he doesn't pop a vein. "I am not going back there," he growls.

"You don't have to."

He blinks away the frown. "What?"

"If you went in, it would look too suspicious. You have your own vaults, so why go in theirs? But no one would bat an eye if Bellatrix went into her own vault."

"And…how are we gonna do that?"

"I know someone."

She wasn't sure about contacting them, of inviting someone else in to what has become such a private thing, between her and Draco. But there is no other option, so the next day there is a guest for tea.

"Wotcher, Draco."

"Oh for fuck's sake!"


	13. Chapter 13

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 13

Forget kissing, he's going to bludgeon her with her own books.

"What the fuck is she doing here?" he rages, staring at the lurid visage of his cousin. Her hair is so bright it's making his eyes water.

"I didn't think he'd be such a drama queen," Tonks says, crossing her arms.

"He has his moments," Hermione replies.

"What the hell gave you the right to invite…_anyone_ into this, Granger?"

"It's my house, so I can do whatever the hell I want. Tonks can be trusted. Besides, I thought you would be happier with family."

In theory, yes, except that the only family he ever remembers being happy with have also done stints in prison.

Hermione sits Tonks down on the sofa and explains everything. Tonks keeps looking at him (trying to be discrete and failing), first with suspicion, then sadness, then pride. He wonders why until it occurs to him that he has done nothing that hasn't been done before. He's not the first in his family to cut and run, just the most unlikely.

"Can I tell mum? She'd get a kick out of this," Tonks says.

"Uh…" Hermione looks at him.

Something sarcastic and comfortable slides across his tongue, but he swallows it. Why not tell Aunt Andromeda, the woman he's never met but remembers seeing, once. He was eight and in Diagon Alley with his mother, being led along by the hand until she had suddenly stopped. His mother was staring through the window of a bookshop, the strangest expression on her face, and when he looked too he only saw a woman with dark hair, a green-haired teenager by her side. "Your Aunt Andromeda and Cousin Nymphadora," his mother had told him when he asked, and quickly dragged him away.

He found out later that it was the muggleborn marriage that stopped him from seeing his family. He wonders what it would have been like, if his parents hadn't cared.

"Okay," he says.

"What, seriously?" Tonks says, eyes wide.

"Yeah."

"I was just kidding, but…you mean I can tell her?"

"Is there something about the word 'yes' you don't understand?"

"There's the Malfoy we all know and love," Hermione says.

They spend the rest of the visit coaching Tonks on Bellatrix's behavior, her ticks, her speech that isn't shrieking across a battlefield. Surprisingly, Draco enjoys the time spent with his cousin. She's funny, and kind, and when she leaves she warns him that her mother may pop by to verify that he hasn't, in fact, got himself killed while out on his own in the cruel, cruel world.

Narcissa and Andromeda were close, as children. So says Tonks.

"Oh, wait, before you go, could you have Remus play this on the air for me…for us," Hermione says, as Tonks prepares to head out the back door.

"Wha—I don't know what you're talking about," Tonks says, nervously. Hermione lifts an eyebrow. "Okay, fine, right, you're a genius."

"Well, not a _genius_." Hermione smiles and hands the other woman a tape.

* * *

"You did really well, you know," Hermione says, later, as they sit with their dinner finished and their tea warming their hands.

"Shh," Draco hisses.

He's staring rapt at the wireless, and although she's just as anxious as he is, she wants him to know. She wants to tell him how good he was, how proud she is, how she can see a different life spreading out for both of them—for all of them. She wants to tell him how close they are to it, how they'll make it through the war.

"I just—"

He takes her hand.

Draco assured her that everyone listens to the wireless, even Death Eaters, even to enemy broadcasts as they try and figure out who is a part of it in an attempt to add to their hit list. She imagines people in dark robes sitting in a lavish parlor, tense with all kinds of fear from the Dark Lord, waiting to recognize the voices coming through the small stereo.

She imagines his parents, waiting to hear about their son.

"Now we have a special broadcast, from an unknown source, to all members of the wizarding community. Muggles, our source says, know their war."

_We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…_

_

* * *

_Author's Note

The italicized excerpt is from a speech given by Winston Churchill in the House of Commons on June 4, 1940. It was the second of three speeches given, roughly, during the period of the Battle of France.


	14. Chapter 14

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 14

Tonks is right.

The next day there's someone banging on the back door at 6AM, and Draco shuffles out of bed and knocks into Hermione in the hall, almost tumbling them both down the stairs.

"What's goin' on?" he mumbles, scratching the back of his head as he follows Hermione into the kitchen. She's wrapped in a blanket. He wishes he'd thought of that.

Hermione carefully peels a curtain aside and looks onto the back porch. "It's…I think it's Andromeda."

"What?"

Hermione opens the door and before he can blink a woman who looks frighteningly like his Aunt Bellatrix is trying to twist his ear off his head. No mistake, it's Aunt Andromeda, although her elder sister probably isn't above ear pulling.

"What the hell do you think you're doing sending my daughter to Gringotts? She's almost five months pregnant, not that you would have noticed; she's not a moron. And where do you get off ordering someone to do anything, anyway, you little coward. _My daughter is not a house elf. Do your own damn dirty work_," Andromeda shouts, and he thinks he can feel an eardrum bursting.

"Uh, Andromeda…Mrs Tonks…ma'am, it was my idea to get Tonks involved. Not Draco's," Hermione says.

"Oh," Andromeda says, blinking rather owlishly. She lets go of Draco's ear.

"Jesus Christ," he groans.

"Would you like some tea?" Hermione asks.

Andromeda nods, and the three of them convene in the living room, Draco prodding at his abused lobe and Hermione rolling her eyes.

"You look like her," Andromeda says, from the silence of blowing on their too hot mugs. "Narcissa. Lucius too, of course, but I can see your mother in you."

"Your sister," he says.

"Yes. My sister."

Draco stares into his mug, watching the steam rise and dissipate. "Have you…have you heard anything?" he asks, and cringes a little at the rough sound of his voice.

"No," she says. "But that's a good thing, I think. If something happened to Lucius and…Narcissa…there would be talk. The Order would know." Andromeda straightens. "And speaking of, why aren't you with them? If you've defected, you should have gone straight to the Order. And why, Miss Granger, are you here at all? I thought you were on the lamb with Potter and one of the young Weasley's."

Hermione fidgets and sips her tea. "I, uh…well, the thing is…that is to say…" She coughs. "I left."

Andromeda lifts an eyebrow, and Draco has a flash of his mother's face.

"I didn't think we were doing the right thing, following Dumbledore's orders, if you can call them that. But I was the only one, so I left."

Andromeda stares at her, and Hermione stares back, posture perfect. After a moment, Andromeda sets her mug on the coffee table and leans back in her chair. She smiles. "Gusty move, Miss Granger."

"Hermione."

Andromeda nods. "And what about you, nephew," she asks, and Draco finds he likes her calling him that: nephew. For all that she looks like Aunt Bellatrix, there's a softness—a kindness—there that her sister doesn't have. It's in her voice, now, and he wants her to say it again.

"I have…reevaluated some of the things I was taught. We're wrong," he says.

"Oh?"

"About muggles; everything we're taught about them is wrong, and I want to do something about it." He sighs. "And I want to help my parents, too."

Andromeda stares at him, unblinkingly, and he wonders what it is she's looking for. He's sitting in Hermione Granger's living room in thin pajamas, hair ruffled from sleep, and it's a wonder his aunt was able to see any familial resemblance in him at all. He doesn't see either of his parents when he looks at his face in the mirror, so different from the boy he used to be.

"Tell me why I should let my daughter go to Gringotts tomorrow," Andromeda finally says, and Draco flicks a smile in Hermione's direction.

* * *

As the morning passes, Andromeda eventually concedes, although not without threatening both of them with severe bodily harm if something happens to her daughter or still-genderless grandchild. As Hermione shows her out the back door, Andromeda pulls her aside and whispers in her ear.

"Are you sure you can trust him?" she asks.

"Of course," Hermione says, without hesitation, and blinks in shock. It's like she asked if she was friends with Harry and Ron, the answer obvious and solid in its certainty. She lets out a short, brittle laugh. "That is…he's different than he was in school. If he wanted to hurt me he would have done it by now. He's on our side."

Andromeda snorts. "Hardly."

"What?"

"He's not on _our_ side," she says, opening the door and letting in a gust of frigid air. Goosebumps leap onto Hermione's skin and she pulls her blanket tighter around her shoulders, "he's on yours."

The door closes and Hermione is alone in the kitchen, eyes wide and brain stalled.

"Oi, Granger, where's your sixth-year Charms book? It's fucking freezing in here and I keep bollocksing up the wand movement."

He doesn't want to work for the Order, she remembers, and he sure as hell isn't working for the Death Eaters. He may have let Tonks and Andromeda in, but for the most part she's the go-between. She's the one who handed the tape over, the one who explained what they're doing—the one he'll talk to.

"Granger! Charms book!"

She looks up and he's standing in the doorway, skin pale in the weak winter sunlight and clothes rumpled. He's thinner than he was last year, and almost gaunt in comparison to the year before, but she can see the strength of the muscles of his arms as he props himself up on the doorframe. He's not as weak as he looks, never has been, really. Underestimated, even by his own family.

And he's on her side.

"It's in my room, on the bookshelf. They're alphabetized," she tells him, smiling.

"Of course they are."

He smiles back.


	15. Chapter 15

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 15

Days pass before they see Tonks again, with no word about how the trip to Gringotts went. Draco and Hermione spend their time thinking about the diadem, ways they can in and out of Hogwarts without being detected, or, even, if they could find someone else who could go for them. Leaving the Hufflepuff cup to Tonks has made them consider the benefits of delegation. They can't be everywhere, not without breaking some Ministry laws, nor can they do everything. Sometimes it's best to let others lend a hand.

"Neville and Ginny are still in school, and they know where the Room of Requirement is," Hermione suggests.

"Anyone I don't despise know where the Room of Requirement is?" Draco asks.

"No."

He sighs. "Fine."

Hermione flicks her wand and their names appear on a piece of parchment tacked to the wall. Draco balances his chair on the back two legs, letting his head loll so he can see the wall behind him. Even upside down it's dull. But then, everything seems to be, today. They've made a second tape and read through some of his darker texts and Draco's told Hermione everything he knows about the Dark Lord's creepy pet twice. And it's only noon.

"So…how does Voldemort transport Nagini?" she asks, again, pacing into his line of vision.

"No," he says.

"No?"

"I've told you twice and I'm not doing it again, so ask me something else or, I don't know, read. You like that."

Hermione sighs, and he can see her wringing her hands, twisting her fingers into knots. "Do you think she's okay?" she asks.

"Who?"

"Tonks."

He puffs his cheeks, letting the air out through his pursed lips like a balloon. "I'm sure she's fine."

"But it's been _days_."

"Maybe she's sick. Aunt Andromeda said she's pregnant, so maybe she's layed up with morning sickness. If she was hurt, we would know."

"How?"

"Aunt Andromeda would have killed us."

"Ah."

She keeps pacing and Draco rocks forward and drops the chair back onto all fours. He pillows his arms on the table and buries his head, but he can still hear her feet moving across the floor. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and goddamn can't she just stay still?

"I still like my speech better," he says, a tad too loudly, but blessedly she stops moving.

"What?"

"I still think the one we're using is too weak."

"It's a beautiful speech."

"It's some bitter old guy spouting off. Mine was better."

"Yours was from Titus Andronicus."

"So?"

She moves again, but this time collapses into a chair across from him. "There's something profoundly disturbed about you, you know that?"

"Yes."

Settling his chin on his forearms, Draco looks at her. She's twisting a quill between her fingers, brow creased, so worried he can feel it radiating off her, making her almost vibrate with tension. He hopes Tonks is all right. He doesn't know what it would do to Hermione, if she wasn't. Maybe delegating isn't such a good idea.

There's a knock at the door.

"Oh god!" Hermione exclaims and leaps from her chair. Draco follows, and before he can say anything about glamours and tricks, she's flung the door open and thrown her arms around his cousin's shoulders.

"Wotcher Hermione," Tonks says, smiling.

"How did it go?" Hermione asks, pulling back and dragging the other woman inside into the relative warm.

"Easy as pie, and kind of fun. Now," Tonks holds up a pillow case, as far away from her body as possible, "do you mind taking this? It's creeping me out."

Hermione grabs the case, opening it and peering inside, and Draco looks over her shoulder. It's a small thing, squat and curved like he always imagined Helga Hufflepuff to be. It would actually be kind of cute, if it didn't house some sycophant's soul.

"What now?" he asks.

"Uh…" Hermione says, sheepishly.

"I take it using the Killing Curse it out?"

"I think so."

"You think?"

"I told you, we don't know how to destroy them. It's not like there's Horcruxes 101 in print."

"Mores the pity."

Hermione closes the pillow case. "I'm going to…put this in my trunk. In the basement. Warded."

"Sounds like a plan."

Hermione leaves and it's just him and Tonks in the kitchen. Surprisingly, it's not as awkward as he thought it would be.

"Did you get on all right? Really?" he asks.

"Oh yeah. Bump's not big enough to cause any flaw in the transformation, so I was Bellatrix to a tee." She smiles wide. "It was brilliant, cackling and ordering people about. Being a bitch for an afternoon was a nice change."

He laughs.

"That's done," Hermione says, striding back into the kitchen sans satanic cup.

"Brilliant; do you need anything else?" Tonks asks.

"Just this, for Remus." Hermione hands over their tape.

Tonks pockets it, and then stands in front of the door, fidgeting. "Uh…okay, so, I…I wanted to…oh shit, look, I'm bored," Tonks finally says.

"Eh?" Draco says.

"I'm pregnant and, according to the Auror's, largely useless, and helping you two has been the most exciting thing I've done in months. In a few weeks I won't be much help as a Metamorphmagus, but just because I'm with sprog doesn't mean my brain has turned to mush. I want to help."

"Tonks, we don't work with the Order," Hermione reminds.

"And the Order won't work with me, not now." Tonks sighs heavily and rubs her belly. "Remus is doing his part. Can you help me do mine?"

He looks at Hermione, whose bottom lip is caught between her teeth, and lifts an eyebrow. He's not opposed to it, and if the Order was stupid enough to let her go just because she needs to sit down more often, then they should take advantage of it. She could talk to people—people who he both won't and can't. His head jerks in a nod.

"Okay," Hermione says.

Tonks beams, and the next day tells them everything she knows about the much-changed Hogwarts.

The day after that, Aunt Andromeda and Uncle Ted come along with her.

* * *

Author's Note

First, an apology: I know the time between updates is lengthening, but it's been a very busy time for me as of late, this week especially. I graduated! I got my Master's degree! My parents came for a visit and I have thus had barely any time to write. Hopefully that will now change.

Second, a thanks: has changed since I last posted chapter-length fic, and I think you can reply to reviews now, however…I have been remiss. So instead of going back to reply to each one, I'm going to reply to everyone here.

Thank you. Really, truly, thank you. Every time I see a review or a story alert or a favourite, it makes me so happy that my writing is being enjoyed. I was worried that my new style and the direction of this fic would be unpopular, but that so many of you like it enough to tell me about it just…it makes me smile. It makes me thankful to be a writer. And it makes me hopeful for my future with original work, that the things that come out of my brain are well received.

Thank you, everyone, your support means a lot.


	16. Chapter 16

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 16

…_If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that…The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction_

They've been playing it for days, over and over, a battle cry for muggleborns and half-bloods and Draco is so close to tossing that damn wireless against a wall he has to sit on his hands. That's not what they meant, when they gave the tape to Tonks. It's supposed to close the divide, to show the kids and parents and grandparents who have that pointless doctrine seared into their snakeskin that muggle and magic are close. That while one may carry a wand and the other a gun, when you push them aside, they're both the same. They are both born red and squalling, they both get skinned knees and go to lessons and try and sneak biscuits before supper; they both get jobs and get married and have children and die; they're bones break, their veins bleed red. Muggles aren't a subspecies, as Hermione calls it. They have magic, too, they just use it in different ways.

And they also wanted to prove that muggles won't just bend over and take it when—_if_—the Dark Lord triumphs. They've never taken to dictators well, and he doubts the killing curse would do anything to a tank.

"I hate this thing," he growls under his breath, but Hermione hears him. It was an eventful day. Uncle Ted and Aunt Andromeda and Tonks came to talk about Hogwarts and tell them tidbits from the Order. It was very pleasant, chatting over tea, Hemione's quill scratching against parchment, until a werewolf came banging on the door.

"How does he know you're here?" Draco asked.

"I…may have left him a note," Tonks said, before letting her husband in the house. Then there was lots of screaming and hormonal crying and Hemione elbowed Draco in the side when he wouldn't stop staring.

"It's not polite," she hissed.

"It's the most entertainment I've had in weeks," he said, and kept watching.

Remus begrudgingly agreed that his wife was right, and that doing something stupid like forbidding her from talking to her cousin would end up with him on the sofa, nursing hexes. He spent the rest of the day helping, and told them their tapes have been well received.

"Honestly, even you can admit it's a good speech," Hermione says, flipping through a two-day old copy of the Prophet, the sound of the pages loud in the relative quiet of the two of them. And that damn wireless.

"It's not the speech," Draco amends. "Well, not just the speech. It's…I think we're saying the wrong things."

"Oh?"

The top of the paper folds down, her eyes peering over the top like two chestnuts, dark and warm and hot with interest. He tries not to squirm.

"We're saying things about war and revenge, and that's fine 'cause we're in a fucking _war_, but…that's not what I—we—wanted, was it?"

"What do you want?"

He sighs, ripping his hands from under his thighs to run them across his scalp. "I don't want any fighting. I don't want death. I just…want everything to be okay. To be good and safe and…peaceful. I don't want to risk people thinking we're generals or something. I'm not going to lead an army or a rebellion—that's Potter's job."

"Peace?"

"Yeah."

Hermione tosses aside her paper and grabs his hand, twining their fingers and pulling him into the dining room. Her wide eyes scan the wall before she points at a piece of parchment with her free hand.

"What about this?" she asks, and he looks around her finger.

He smiles. "Fantastic."

_One two, one two three four_

_Everybody's talking about Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism, this-ism, that-ism, ism ism ism_

_All we are saying, is give peace a chance_

_

* * *

_Author's Note

The first quote is an excerpt from Shylock's famous speech in William Shakespeare's play _The Merchant of Venice_.

The second quote is the beginning of John Lennon's _Give Peace A Chance_. I felt that, having used this quote, it would be appropriate to post this today. John, the world is a sadder place for your absence.


	17. Chapter 17

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 17

"We should do something."

It's the morning of Christmas Eve. Snow blankets the lawns outside, Draco and Hermione are bundled up in blankets on the sofa inside, and it's quiet. They're taking a breather, on order of Aunt Andromeda, who claimed that just because there's a war on doesn't mean they can't relax and celebrate the holidays. Hermione agreed, albeit reluctantly. Apparently even World War I stopped for a seasonal game of football.

"Do what?" he asks, burying his nose in a knitted throw.

"Something to celebrate; I mean, I know we haven't destroyed the cup yet, but we've made so much progress, which for you and I is a miracle."

"Oh, thanks so much."

"Draco," she says, looking at him archly, "if we were working together in school, would we have actually got anything done?"

No, he thinks, because I would have been too busy snogging you.

Oh hell.

"Uh…no?"

"Is that a question?"

Draco slouches against the cushions, cocooning himself up to his eyes. "You wanted to do something," he quickly reminds. "Something festive?"

"Yeah." She nibbles her bottom lip. He wishes she wouldn't. "We're going out."

"Are we?"

"For Christmas Eve, just the two of us. I used to go to the Christmas service with my parents, but since they're…away, it would be better to skip it. But we'll have dinner and see the decorations. We deserve it."

"Granger, are you asking me on a date?"

"Shut up."

That evening, Hermione takes him to a restaurant in the town centre. It's a small thing down a cobbled lane, recommended by an aunt almost a year ago although Hermione has never been there. "I won't be recognized," she said when he brought it up.

"Why don't we just use a glamour? You know, like smart people," he said.

"But it's Christmas Eve! We can't be all glamoured up on Christmas Eve."

"Well, when you get your arse caught by Snatchers, remind me to say 'I told you so'."

He's a bit of a nervous wreck all through appetizers. The restaurant is candle-lit and cozy and it's just too damn _nice_. There's going to be some sort of karmic catch. He knows there is.

But then, he forgets.

Halfway through their pasta and the wine that's as red as cranberries, he forgets about Snatchers. He forgets about dark wizards and war and death, of the feel of his parents trembling beside him as they sat on one side of their dining room table; of Professor Burbage twisting in the air. It's still there, of course, hovering in the back of his mind, but for a little while, he is just a boy, any boy, in a nice jumper and jeans, having dinner with a pretty girl. Sitting there, they are not the people they are—Draco Malfoy the Death Eater and Hermione Granger the Smartest Witch. They are the people they could have been if those names weren't tied tight around their necks.

"So we decide to get a taxi back to Malcolm's, and we're all out and halfway up the stairs to his flat when we realize…we left Colin in the taxi. He fell asleep and never got out!"

"Seriously?"

"He is the lightest lightweight I've ever seen."

Hermione's cheeks are flushed and her eyes bright, shadows playing across her face. They reach for the wine bottle and their fingers brush. His heart pounds. He's doomed.

And maybe that's not such a bad thing.

* * *

When dinner's over, snow is falling. Hermione runs through it, spreading her arms and twirling with her mouth open, feeling the clean brush of snowflakes against the inside of her mouth. Draco laughs at her.

"Come on, Draco. Play with me," she says, sliding across a patch of ice and stumbling on the other side.

"I don't play," he says, seriously, although she can tell he isn't.

"Liar."

She waits until he's crossed the ice patch before grabbing his hand and running. Running running running past the church and the houses and the lit windows of restaurants, all the way to the edge of Prospect Park, with its bare trees and weedy ground. Only then does she slow to a stroll, looking around with a smile and her breath misting in front of her.

"This used to be my favourite place," she says. "Mum and dad would take me on weekends, and I'd sit on the lawn and read. When you're here, it's like the rest of the world doesn't exist."

"What's your favourite place now?" he asks.

His cheeks and nose are red, his hair windswept and wet with snow. His eyes are bright and his lips are parted in a pant, and they're nice lips. Pink and curved in a cupid's bow. She knows she's staring, and she doesn't care.

"I don't know."

Something shifts. She can feel it, like a spell's been cast, like Muffliato, the only thing she can hear the sound of their breathing and the thump of her heart. Her skin leaps out in goosebumps and something draws her to him, against him, a string she can't see connecting her heart to his. His fingers tighten around hers. His head dips, stops, waits. She thinks he speaks but she can't be sure, every part of her waiting waiting waiting, drawn tight, taught, ready to pluck.

Then the wait is over.

* * *

Author's Note

Merry Christmas!


	18. Chapter 18

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 18

They kiss. Their lips are chapped and the tips of their noses cold where they brush against their cheeks, and they don't know what to do with their hands. They hover in the air, white and trembling like moths, before the hot hollow of their mouths open and their fingers land on short strands of hair and the rough fabric of a jacket. Tongues sweep, warming faces and sending nails scratching scalp and fingers fisting in the back of a jacket, and then they press. Press body, press mind, press soul, giving one sharp rock that sends a groan reverberating through the marrow of their bones.

They feel a squeeze.

The snow is gone; they kick off their shoes and yank off scarves and jackets and the single purple hat. One large hand slides under a top and up the soft bare skin covering a spine, sending the body with its delicate bones and small breasts pushing into the larger one. A jumper is pulled sharply over a blond head and tossed into the dark, and fair's fair so another jumper follows it. A tiny, bird-boned hand smoothes over thin shoulders, chest, ribs, the sunken curve of a belly to one hip bone. Teeth sink into one bottom lip. A whimper. A smirk.

Backs of knees touch the bed and one finger flicks open a bra. Lips move down, down, to throat and breast and—

One hot mouth plucks and sucks and rolls between sharp teeth, and small nails dig into the skin of thin shoulders and oh Christ that feels so good. They want to be everywhere at once, at their mouth and breasts and cunt and cock, but they can't make up their mind so their lips meet, wet and sloppy and _fierce_, and one tiny hand flicks open a button fly. Jeans go, socks go, pants go, and then it's just skin skin skin, legs wrapped around hips and teeth against the flesh of necks and nails scraping from arse to nape and fuck. Oh fuck. Oh Christ and Merlin and Buddha and anyone else—who knew it would feel this good? Their breath pants and lips kiss tear tracks from a brave face, and they taste salt on each other's tongues, and then they rock. Slowly, tentatively, until slow is too slow and their moving like waves, surging and swelling and breaking on the planes of each other's bodies. Their sweat-slick skin slides and they gasp half-formed words and pleas and names, oh names. They tumble out their mouths and drip off their chins and then, and then, and then…

Something inside snaps back like a rubber band, colour spreading across the inside of their eyelids and hips still moving even after it's over, and then they still.

* * *

Draco kisses the skin under her collarbone before he moves and drags the blankets up. Hermione sighs and curls on her side, pressed against his damp body. Neither can think of anything to say.

* * *

Author's Note

Happy (somewhat belated) New Year! Enjoy the smut.


	19. Chapter 19

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 19

Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger had sex.

It's not the most romantic thought to pass through his head first thing in the morning, but it's what does. Watery sunlight spills across the layered blankets and duvet and the curve of Hermione's bare shoulder. He traces it with a fingertip. She doesn't stir.

Back in fourth year, when he first thought about having sex (with Pansy of all people, but then, he was kinda-sorta-maybe dating her at the time), he always assumed that he'd feel smug afterwards, satisfied, so pleased that damn near everyone in their year would know what happened without him saying a word. In short, he would act like the asshole he had been, and he is overwhelmingly glad that he doesn't feel that way now. Hermione is not Pansy, not someone who he'd known for ages but still not well; not someone he was only half sure about. He likes Hermione. He _likes_ her, which is something he still finds mind-boggling. He likes the way she bites her bottom lip when she's thinking, and the way she worries her hands, weaving her fingers together and then breaking them apart again and again and again. He likes her hands. He likes her hair. He likes her brain and bravery and stubborn will. He likes how she understands why he's here, in her house. He likes how she trusts him.

He likes _her_.

"Happy Christmas," Hermione moans, eyes closed and stretching. He can feel every muscle in her body pulling taught.

"Happy Christmas," he says.

She opens her eyes, and smiles, and he thinks that this is the best Christmas he's ever had.

"Time to get up," she says, and pushes out of bed.

"Uh…what?"

Hermione takes out clothes from her dresser drawers, naked and unselfconscious and beautiful and why are they getting up again?

"Christmas lunch at Andromeda's," she reminds him. "It's probably best that you put clothes on. Or you could go naked. I know I'd enjoy it."

He swallows hard.

"Right."

She wriggles into a pair of pink knickers, and he almost tackles her to the floor.

They are late for lunch.

* * *

Tonks corners her while they're doing the dishes. Tonks is drying and Hermione is washing, elbow-deep in soap suds, and Tonks hits her in the arm with her dishtowel.

"You had sex, didn't you?" she says, and Hermione drops her cup and splashes the front of her jumper.

"What?"

"With my cousin."

Hermione brushes soap bubbles off herself, eyes on her moving hands and definitely not on Tonks' smiling face.

"What, is it written on my forehead?"

"Almost."

"Great."

Tonks elbows her. "So…should I be welcoming you into the family?"

"Oh Merlin," Hermione groans.

It's not that she regrets it, because she doesn't. It was probably the sanest decision she's made in a while. She likes him, in a way that is so different from the way she liked Ron that it's almost unfair to compare them. It's older, mature, not born from creeping about in corridors and checking his homework. Instead it's war and stress and strategy and _understanding_; understanding of their minds and their merits and what they want for the future. She can see herself with him in the future, paying bills and reading the paper. With Ron there was only handholds over the house table.

But that doesn't mean she wants to talk about marrying him. They may not even _live_ that far, after all.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, the Blacks are odd and, well, racist, but those ones are mostly dead anyway," Tonks soothes.

"It's not that," Hermione says. "It's all…unspoken, right now, and I think Draco and I should at least _talk_ before you start picking out my wedding robes."

Tonks waves her hands dismissively, and Hermione flicks soapy water at her.


	20. Chapter 20

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 20

When they get back from Aunt Andromeda's, Draco flops onto the sofa and stares at the television. He wishes it were working. It would eat up the silence that is trying to strangle him.

"That was nice, wasn't it?" Hermione asks, lighting her wand and propping it up on the table so it shines like a candle.

"What?"

"Christmas."

"Oh. Yeah. It was…different, from what I'm used to," he admits.

"Yeah?" She sits, curling her feet under her, resting her head on the back of the sofa and looking at him with sleepy eyes. "What was Christmas at the manor like?"

"Quiet. But not a good quiet, a…_loud_ quiet. The manor is so big and it's just the three of us, and sometimes it's nice to have that privacy but others…it's not so nice."

"And I take it there were no crackers in the Malfoy house?"

He snorts. "Can you really see my father with a paper crown, Granger?"

"Hey, your house, they'd probably be made of silver and gold."

He pokes her in the side, just once, and gets her lips quirking. He does it again, and she flinches. He does it again, and again and again, and then they're sprawling across the sofa, tickling and giggling and wriggling in a way that, surprisingly, doesn't make him think of anything but sunshine. Of bugs. Of rolling in the field beside the manor, getting grass in his mouth and tasting summer. Of those happy, peaceful moments before his father caught him ruining his clothes, when he was just a kid playing.

The things this girl makes him _feel_.

Their laughter fades, and he's left leaning over her, close enough to feel her breath. This is a moment, he thinks, one of those moments that mean the life or death of something. He jumped her this morning but they haven't talked about it. He could still be sleeping in the guest room.

"I—" he starts.

He can feel how shaky her breathing is in the split second before she kisses him, brushing her lips over his, as light as down feathers. He kisses back.

"I like you," she says matter-of-factly when she pulls away.

"Well, how couldn't you?" he says. Why, he has no fucking idea.

"Oh please," she scoffs, pushing him away and getting up. She walks towards the stairs, stretching, and Draco resists the urge to bash his head against the coffee table in favour of bandaging this situation.

"I like you too!" he shouts.

She stops walking. For a split second, he wonders if he's going to get hexed.

"Well, how couldn't you?" she says, turning and looking at him with a soft expression. Like she knows he'll stay stupid shit sometimes, but that's just because he's still exorcising the prat out of himself. "Now come to bed."

He does.

* * *

The next morning, she wakes up before he does. She watches him, the way his head lies against the pillow, the line of his jaw. She won't pretend she wasn't offended last night, when she decided to just get it all out in the open, and he said _that_. She wanted to strangle him. But then he said he liked her too, and when she looked at him, all offense faded away. He's like bird, shivering off its baby feathers and confused about what it's supposed to do now that it's stepped out of the nest. He'll make mistakes (and so will she), but then, isn't that part of why she likes him? Because he's so human and not afraid to show it.

After breakfast, it's business as usual.

"We can't send owls. That would be idiotic," Hermione says, staring at the dining room wall and biting her bottom lip.

"Hogsmeade weekend?" Draco suggests.

"Tonks said they've been cut. Wouldn't want students running to the nearest fireplace to escape, would they?"

"Well, you were the rule breaker, aren't there ways to get in?"

He lifts a hand, trailing it up the back on her denim-covered thigh. She tries not to squirm.

"Well, yes, but they're terribly risky. We can't send in Tonks anymore, because she's started to show, and if either one of us go and get caught…"

Endgame, almost certainly. The very Gryffindor part of her would love to rush in there, to find the diadem herself and maybe smuggle a few people out of Hogwarts as well, but the larger, more logical part knows that's suicide. It's why they're delegating. It's why she's in her house in the first place. She can't do this alone, but there is still the matter of contacting Neville and Ginny.

Draco sighs, and she feels his fingers twitch. "I would give my last knut for an invisibility cloak," he says.

"So would—" She stops. Oh, how could she have been so stupid?

She dashes upstairs, throwing open her bedroom door and dumping out her beaded bag; not there. She rifles through her muggle wallet and wizarding money purse, scours the surface of her dresser and looks under her bed. It ends up being in a pair of school robes, folded neatly in a drawer.

"What the hell are you doing?" Draco asks when she comes back down stairs, beaming.

"I have our answer!" she tells him.

"You _do_ have an invisibility cloak?"

"Don't be stupid. Harry's got it." He blinks. "No, what I have, is this."

Draco stares at her outstretched hand. "If all you wanted was a galleon, Granger, you could have just asked."

* * *

Author's Note

Firstly, my sincere apologies about the amount of time between updates. Suffice it to say, I've been extremely busy, and suffering from writers block. The former is no excuse, what with the chapters being so short, but there it is.

Secondly, my previous fic, "Accidental", has been translated into Italian! The translation was done by the lovely Lucilla7, and if you are interested, you can find the fic here: efpfanfic_dot_?uid=125530 (when copy-pasting, just remove the _dot_).


	21. Chapter 21

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 21

The enchanted galleon is possibly the most brilliant thing Draco has ever seen. It's made even more brilliant when Hermione tells him about the DA, and Marietta Edgecombe, and goddamn does that not make him want to shag her into the ground.

So he does.

Later, half-dressed and smirking, they sit on the dining room floor with Hermione's wand pointed at the galleon.

"Hopefully either Ginny or Neville or Luna has their galleon handy. Otherwise they may not get the message for months," she says, shifting in her knickers and undershirt.

"Come on, Granger, think positively," he says.

She snorts, and flicks her wand. _If you can see this, please respond asap_ appears on the coin's surface, before fading.

"Now we wait." She sets her wand aside.

Draco has to actively stop himself from fidgeting. He's vibrating, he's thrumming, with excitement and adrenaline and a healthy dose of terror. After the diadem, there's just the snake and Potter and the psycho himself. They're getting close, so close that if he tries hard enough he can see the end of all this. It could happen in a matter of months; _weeks_ if they're lucky. Draco can feel his hands shake against the carpet, and he's not sure what he wants more: a cigarette or a warm bed with covers to pull over his head.

He wraps an arm around Hermione's back, pulling her tight against his side. The shaking stills.

"We need to find a way to destroy them," he says, voice hoarse and he coughs. "There has to be some way. Nothing is indestructible."

"Of course not; Dumbledore managed, but…was cursed in the process."

"You said two were destroyed, right? The ring, and…shit, I've forgotten."

"The diary."

"Yeah, that. Potter did it, right? So, I take it the diary _wasn't_ cursed?"

"No, I don't think so. He—" she starts, but stops with a sigh, shifting under his arm to lean heavily against the wall, head tipped back. Her throat is very white. "He stabbed the diary with a Basilisk fang, and he was fine, meaning that Voldemort didn't put curses on every object. He doesn't like repetition, we know that," she says wearily.

"How did Dumbledore do it?"

"He used the sword of Gryffindor."

"So Founders stuff works, too?"

"I…I'm not sure. I don't know why he used it. There isn't anything terribly special about any of the Founders objects."

"There must be a reason why Dumbledore used the sword. Who had it before? Did they do something to it?"

She sighs again and closes her eyes. "I was unconscious through most of second year, unfortunately, but I do know that Harry pulled the sword out of the Sorting Hat and stabbed the Basilisk with it, before he destroyed the diary."

Draco thinks his heart might have stopped beating. "Hermione," he says, and she starts. In the back of his brain, it occurs to him that he hasn't used her first name recently unless he's been between her thighs, "how much do you know about Basilisks?"

She opens her eyes. "Common knowledge."

"What do you know about their venom?"

She turns her head, and she's so near that he can count all the freckles on her nose. "Oh my god," she breathes, and wraps her arms around him.

* * *

Logically—because that's who she is: Hermione Granger, the fucking _logical_ one—she should have been happy. Thrilled. Elated. All those synonyms for how ecstatic she should be at discovering how to destroy the horcruxes and live, but instead she's scared to death. She fists her fingers into Draco's t-shirt and presses so close she can feel his bones, and Jesus she doesn't think she can do this. She can feel the end creeping in like a fog, brushing the back of her neck with cold, clammy fingers and making her swiftly, frighteningly aware of what might happen. Of who they might lose. She feels Draco breathing against her, and thinks of him still, and cries into his neck.

"Merlin, Hermione," he says, holding her tight, fingers twisting into her hair.

"I don't think I can do this anymore," she sobs.

She can hear his throat clog. "Yes you can," he says roughly. "When have you ever given up on something? You're too damn stubborn to do that."

"I don't want anyone to die." Her whole body shudders. "_I_ don't want to die."

It's selfish, so selfish she hates herself a little bit for it, but it's the truth. She's eighteen years old, and she doesn't want to die. That can't be wrong to want, can it?

"You're not going to die. No one is going to die. That's why we're being smart about all of this. You said it's going to work, and it will."

"Everyone knows life doesn't work out that way."

"Fuck everyone else!" He takes her face in his hands, hands that feel cool against her too-warm cheeks. "You are going to live. You, and me, and my parents, and Tonks, and Aunt Andromeda, and everyone else are going to live. _We will live_."

He presses his mouth to hers hard, and then drags her against him, cradling her in his arms and legs while he leans against the wall. She cries until her chest aches, until her breath hiccups, until she feels as worn as one of the quilts on her bed. Slowly, she presses the whorl of one ear flush against Draco's chest. His heartbeat is as steady as the pulse of a drum.

They almost miss the galleon's reply.

* * *

Author's Note

I'm not terribly pleased with this chapter, but it is what it is.

In other news, if you have the time and some money to spend, head on over to _help_japan_ (http:/community(dot)livejournal(dot)com/help_japan/). It's an auctioning community, the funds raised by each auction going to a charity that is giving aid to Japan, in the wake of the recent destruction by earthquake and tsunami. Both fandom and non-fandom related items are up for auction, including both original and fan fiction. I'm up there (under deepdarkness), and if you would like to have me write something for you, with the prompt of your choice, go on and bid!


	22. Chapter 22

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 22

_Who's there?_ is etched into the galleon's surface.

_The know-it-all_, Hermione writes back, hesitantly, in case it's not who she thinks.

_Hermione! It's Ginny. Are you all right? Harry? Ron?_

_ I'm fine. I need your help._

_ Anything._

_ I need you to get into the Room of Requirement. Imagine junk. There's a diadem, silver with stones. Get it._

_ Why?_

_ Can't explain, but it's important._

Nothing.

_Trust me._

_ Okay_, drifts across the coin, and Draco feels Hermione exhale lowly.

_I don't know how you'll get it to me. I'll keep in touch._

_ Okay. Will go once back from hols._

_ Everyone okay?_

_ As well as can be, considering._

The conversation peters out, and Draco rests his chin against Hermione's shoulder. "You didn't tell her," he murmurs.

"She doesn't need to know I left them. She would just get angry, and if she's angry she may not want to help."

"How devious of you."

"Not devious; smart. We don't have time for fighting." She sets her wand aside and relaxes against him, although he can feel that she isn't. She's stiff, muscles bunched like there are stones under her skin. Her eyes are still red. She smells like salt.

He won't lie: she scared the shit out of him.

Of the two of them, he thought he would be the one to lose it. Not that he hasn't already—sometimes he thinks about everything that's happened since standing on that tower, and wonders if all that's followed isn't some hallucination. He's lying in a bed in St. Mungo's, being spoon-fed his meals by portly nurses, because he can't have done all of these things. He can't have put himself in worse danger than when he was bowing at the Dark Lord's feet. But it's all real, stark and terrible and wonderful all at the same time.

And instead it's Hermione crying in his arms. He will do anything for her not to do that again.

"Now wha—" Draco coughs. "Now what do we do? The last three horcruxes are the hardest."

"Yeah," Hermione says softly. Probably thinking about Potter; Christ, one of them is going to have to stab the idiot with a sword and it's going to _kill her_ no matter who does it. He holds her tighter.

"I'm hungry," he announces, a tad too loudly because she winces, and he presses a kiss to her ear. "Lunch, Granger."

"I'm not your house elf."

He smiles widely.

* * *

She knows exactly what he's doing. He's being a complete and utter prat and he's doing it on purpose, and she wants to hit him with something really, really hard. Repeatedly. Or spell his mouth shut.

It's the nicest thing he's ever done for her.

"You know, back in the twelfth century, wizards used to keep muggles as servants. Slaves. Used to make 'em dance," he tells her, sitting in a chair in the kitchen with his hands behind his head and smirk on his stupid, lovely mouth.

"_Draco_," she warns.

"Of course, this was before Top of the Pops. And MTV. I'm sure there are some wizards who wouldn't mind getting a telly if it meant watching Take That act like twats."

"A fan of Robbie Williams, are you?"

"Now," Draco continues, "they just have house elves for entertainment. House elf baiting? Forget bears, that's where—"

"Oh for—_Draco Malfoy will you shut up_."

His smirk flicks to a full-on grin. He knows she knows what he's doing and is so pleased he practically reeks of it. The line between her chest and groin twitches. Perfect. She's attracted to his smugness.

Bastard.

"You don't have to say those things," she says, softly, although she didn't mean to. It just slipped out, and so did all her indignant fire, and she turns to the pot on the stove and taps it with her wand. She thinks of spent balloons, and knows his grin has dropped.

"I know," he says. "But I…you…well, you know, right?"

She takes out bowls and spoons and sets them on the kitchen table. He's shifted in his chair, his hands resting across from their cutlery. His fingers are long and oh-so pale, full of calluses and paper cuts. His nails are chipped. Manicured, was how she used to think of him, not a hair or thread or word out of place. Now, he stutters and stumbles and his clothes have holes. She wonders if this is growing up.

She leans over and kisses him.

"Yeah," she breathes. He smiles and kisses her back.

"Besides," he says, "you're hot when you're angry."

"Oh please."

* * *

Author's Note

This chapter has been a bit of a bitch to get through, which is partly why it's taken so long. The next few shouldn't. However, real life is the rest of the reason why it has taken me _three months_ to post this. I now have two unpaid writing jobs (yay!) and am currently frantically looking for a paid job, both of which are extremely time-consuming. But this fic is not forgotten.

Enjoy the chapter!


	23. Chapter 23

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 23

"Dress warm," Draco says, New Years Eve, pulling on his coat that he layered with warming charms using Hermione's wand, "we're going out."

"Excuse me?"

"We're going out for New Years."

"Are we really?" Hermione says, lifting a skeptical eyebrow.

"Yep."

"And what are we going to do, exactly?"

"Whatever the hell Malcolm comes up with."

He pulls the hood of his jumper to flop over the neck of his coat and looks at her, waiting, fingers itching to force her into her gloves and boots and hat. Last night, while Hermione slept, fitfully although in the daylight she pretends she isn't, he crept into the kitchen and pulled out the crumpled mobile number he'd found lurking in a jeans pocket. Malcolm answered, sleepy and swearing, and told Draco and his fit girlfriend to meet him in London.

"Any idea as to what that would be, exactly?" Hermione asks, but slowly winds a scarf around her neck.

"No idea, but we're meeting him and everyone else in Piccadilly Circus. They'll be the ones with the flag."

"What?"

"We did what you wanted on Christmas, so I figured we'd spend tonight my way."

"I don't remember you protesting spending time with your family."

He waves his hand dismissively, and cracks open the back door.

"Ready?"

Hermione sighs and they're out the door and, like lightening, in an alley next to a snow-covered skip. Beside them, the streets are lamp lit and buzzing, people shuffling through slush in feather boas and plastic hats, skinny heels and pressed trousers. One man shivers in a nappie made out of a sheet, a sash with 'New Year' scrawled across it slung over his chest. Draco shakes his head; muggles.

"Come on," he says, tugging Hermione out onto the pavement, past closed shops and full pubs, clubs with lines so long they twist round street corners. Draco squeezes her hand tight. When they finally come to Piccadilly Circus, they find it swarming, but one arm waves above the rest, a flag ruffling in the chill breeze.

"You have got to be kidding me," Hermione mutters.

"Not a big Man United fan, Granger?" Draco says.

"I did not want to spend my New Years listening to drunk boys talk about football. It's worse than Quidditch."

"But it's better than sitting in your house, thinking about—" Potter dying, killing Potter, him dying, her dying, death death death, like he knows she has been, despite his attempts to make her feel better. Hopefully this one would work, "—things," he finishes.

She nods sharply and they push through the crowd, to where Malcolm and the rest are huddled around the memorial fountain. There's lots of shouting, after that; introductions and cheering and teasing over Draco having finally got laid, which makes him want to punch Joe in the jaw. They move to a pub, for drinks and shared plates of chips, and then to a club, where Colin climbs up on a massive speaker and plays air guitar, and Hermione, warm and languid and just a little drunk, presses against him to dance in a way she never did during the Yule Ball. From there it's more pubs and clubs and, briefly, Draco's former bedsit, for joints and a pee and a map spread out over a mattress to decide where to go next.

At midnight, he kisses her under a disco ball, and never hears what muggles sing when the year turns. The whole time, he never lets go of her hand.

* * *

It's past three AM, she thinks, and they're in a mostly-empty pub, bathed in yellow light and the music from the jukebox in the corner. She doesn't know where they are and, surprisingly, doesn't mind.

"So, what the hell do you see in him?" Malcolm asks, sliding across the wooden bench to sit beside her. He's ruffled and dopy and has a smile that reminds her of Sirius Black although far more harmless.

"Lots of things," she says, and sips her pint.

"Is it the money? The threads? That poncey way he sips his scotch?"

"Actually, Malc, it's because of my massive—"

"Draco!" she yelps.

"—intellect. Head out of the gutter, Granger." He winks. She wants to hit him.

Malcolm laughs.

Suddenly, there's a thump and a crash and Colin plops into the seat across from them. "Jukebox is broken," he says.

Draco lifts an eyebrow. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Sudden thing, couldn't tell you how it happened."

Hermione snorts and Malcolm goes to get shots, and suddenly there's a hand in her face. "What are you doing?" she asks.

"Dance with me," Draco says.

"The song is depressing."

"So is everything." Draco sighs, and suddenly he's not seventeen anymore. He's old, ancient, tired and worn and haggard and god, what is this war doing to them? And why can't she just forget about it, for one fucking night? "Come—"

"Okay," she says, and takes his hand.

He pulls her into an empty space near the bar, away from the chairs and tables and their friends knocking back something that looks like vodka. She winds an arm around his shoulder, and he starts to lead, steps sure and purebred. She can feel his breath on her skin, rustling the hair near her forehead, and can feel every joint in his hand as it presses against her back. It's like how it was hours earlier, standing in the club dark with everyone screaming around them, but not being able to hear or see or feel anything but him. He makes her feel present—immediate—grounded in the minutes and seconds they occupy as opposed to the future she lives in otherwise. Her brain is always hours ahead, but he makes it stop.

Behind them, there's singing.

_Hey little train! We're all jumping on the train that goes to the Kingdom_

She presses close to him and they're not dancing anymore, arms around each other swaying and goddamn, she's crying again. She's so sick of crying.

_We're happy, Ma, we're having fun, and the train ain't even left the station_

The others are too drunk to pay attention to the words, but she is. Oh god, she is.

"New year, Hermione," Draco whispers. "And we're not going to let it be like the last one, right?"

She nods, lips pressed together, trying not to sob. He pulls her closer and she grips his hoodie so tight it must be tearing at the seams, trying not to think about how fragile and desperate he sounded, like he had one foot over a precipice; like he was standing on cracking glass.

"It's going to be better," she gasps.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"

"Wha—"

"GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HER!"

"Dean?"

_O children!_

* * *

Author's Note

The lyrics are from the song "O Children" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. While I'm trying to keep this fic as canon as possible (i.e. set in 1998), the use of this song in the film was too good not to swipe. So, let's just pretend it was released a few years before it actually was (2004).


	24. Chapter 24

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 24

Dean Thomas can draw, that's what Draco knows about him. He also has a good right hook.

"Dean!" Hermione cries, grabbing his arm while Draco prods his jaw and hopes he's not bleeding.

"What the fuck did he do to you, Hermione?" Dean demands. "What the hell is going on?"

"Jesus, Thomas, what did I ever do to you?" Draco groans, although he probably shouldn't have since it looks like Dean's head is about to explode.

"What didn't you do, you fucking Dea—"

"Dean!" Hermione slaps a hand over his mouth and Draco thinks he could kiss her, right then, throbbing cheek and all. Joe, Malcolm, and the others are watching them, curious and shocked and Tony still has his coat on.

"Uh, this is my cousin Dean," Tony says, weakly.

What are the _odds_?

"Cousin?" Draco says, tentatively flexing his jaw. "I've met your cousin."

"My dad's side," Tony explains. "This is my mum's."

"God, you're like Weasley's," he mutters.

"Like you can talk, you're going to have a second cousin soon," Hermione admonishes. Behind her hand, Dean frowns.

"Which makes three of us, since Aunt Bellatrix was too much of a psycho to procreate; hardly the rabbit warren you call frie—OW!"

He rubs his shin and thinks Thomas might be smiling, the bastard.

"Did you all drop out?" Colin asks.

Dean's eyes widen and Hermione whips around and for a minute, Draco wonders if he'll have to Obliviate his friends. Slowly, Hermione's hand slips from Dean's mouth.

"Uh…it's…I…" Dean stutters.

"Did you seriously drop out?" Tony asks. "Shit, your mum is going to _kill_ you."

"I—"

"Did you even get your GCSE's?"

"'Course I did," Dean blurts, eyes still wide and scared like a frightened deer's. "But it's…you know…Christmas and all. I…got in a fight with mum over…A-Levels."

"So that's why you—"

"Yeah."

"Right…so—"

"Sorry," Hermione interrupts, and Dean sags with relief. "But, Dean, could I talk to you for a second?"

"Sure."

Hermione tugs Dean to the back of the pub, and Draco follows, through a dimly-lit corridor and into the women's loo. Hermione takes out her wand out of her beaded bag and flicks it at the door. Draco can feel spells shiver across it. It's filthy in here, grimy pink tile and one flickering overhead light. He tries not to touch anything.

"What the fuck is _he_ doing here?" Dean demands, glaring at Draco like he's the filth smeared across the cracked mirror on the wall beside them. Draco glares back, like Dean's the person who put the dirt there in the first place.

"He's not your enemy, Dean," Hermione says, calmly and a little worn.

"He's a Death Eater! He…what he did…we could have _died_ last year, and it's all his fault!"

"And he knows."

"Oh, good for him, but that won't do us any good when the Snatchers get here."

"We aren't going to be caught by Snatchers."

"But that's what Death Eaters do, Hermione! They call Snatchers to round up muggleborns, and—goddammit, what are you _doing_ with him?"

"I…" Hermione's mouth works for a minute before falling into one thin line, and Draco feels a jolt move through his body, from the back of his skull to his heels. His heart feels like it's trying to shoot up his esophagus, because what could she possibly say? She's dating him? Fucking him? Using him for his brain and his books and the surprisingly useful damage having the Dark Lord squatting in his house has caused? He stares at her, whole body tense, and hopes he doesn't look pleading. "I'm with him," she finally says, and he thinks it's the best thing anyone has ever said.

* * *

Dean is only the fifth person she's had to explain this to, and already she's tired; tired of arguing, tired of convincing, tired of placating. Why can't they just accept that Draco is on her side when he doesn't hex them on sight?

"I…what?" Dean asks, frowning.

"I'm with him," she repeats.

"What does that—"

Hermione sighs. "We're working together, and I'll explain it later when we're a bit more…comfortable."

For a minute, Dean says nothing, staring at her like it's someone under Polyjuice speaking through her lips. Muffled by the door, she can hear glasses clinking and someone laughing and the Cranberries being played mournfully on the jukebox. She tries not to fidget as she waits.

"What do Harry and Ron think about this?" Dean finally asks.

"They don't know," she tells him.

He scrubs a hand across his face, and it's only then that she notices the bones in his wrist, the sink of his cheeks and the dark spots around his eyes. She frowns.

"Why aren't you in school?" she asks.

Dean sighs. "I'm muggleborn, or at least, I think I am; dad left before I could find out. Didn't want to put mum and everyone else in danger, so I left. Mum thinks I'm at school, but I…Tony's letting me borrow some money off him." Dean ducks his head. "I was running out of food."

"Shit, Thomas," Draco hisses.

Dean shrugs, and Hermione feels like an idiot. Bigger than an idiot: one of those children in 1950s films who are made to sit in a corner with a conical dunce cap on their heads, because how could she have been so stupid? Hogwarts has stopped accepting muggleborns and the Ministry has created a registry and Draco's uncle Ted got in a fight with Andromeda when they didn't think anyone was listening about whether or not it would be best if he cut and run, and still she didn't think. Where else would unregistered muggleborns go? Home? Out of the country? How many others are lurking behind trees and in underbrush, just like Harry and Ron?

How many have died already?

"You're coming with us," she says.

"Excuse me?" Draco says.

She ignores him. "Tonight, you're coming with Draco and me, and we'll sort you out. If you don't want to stay, then we can put you up with someone else."

Dean's eyes are as huge as a house elf's and as she waits, she turns to Draco who looks resigned. She can see his thoughts play across his face like they've been written there; he's thinking about Crookshanks, her love of strays and the downtrodden, and he should really wipe that smirk off his face because it's not like he can talk.

Finally, Dean nods. She smiles.

Everyone watches them as they come out of the loo, and Hermione can see Draco's hand twitch for where his wand used to be.

"And what was—" Tony starts.

"Joe," she says, "how's Karris?"

"Who?" Joe asks.

Her smile widens.

* * *

Author's Note

Oh Draco, so insecure. Also, in case you were curious, the Cranberries song I was imagining playing was "Zombie". I thought it was appropriate.


	25. Chapter 25

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 25

Hermione Granger: patron saint of misfits, of squashed-faced cats and sixth sons and boys brought up in cupboards; of house elves and werewolves and muggleborns on the lamb.

Of disillusioned Death Eaters.

Of lost boys with nowhere else to go.

Hermione says goodbye to Draco's friends in the weak dawn light before dragging him and Dean into an alley and disapparating. Back in her house, she has Draco clear out the guest room for Dean and for a minute he stands in the hall, satchel and jeans and two loose socks dangling from his fingers, unsure about where to go.

"What are you doing?" Hermione whispers, rubbing her eyes and closing the guest room door.

"Uh…"

"It's eight o'clock in the morning," she says with a groan and a yawn and shuffles towards her bedroom. "Oh god, I think I'm still drunk."

Draco snorts. "Hardly drunk," he says.

She makes a sleepy noise in the back of her throat and opens her bedroom door. She doesn't shut it. He follows her in.

Dumping his things in a corner he watches her, watches her close the curtains and kick off her shoes, slip off her jumper and shimmy out of her jeans. She unclasps her bra and tosses on her pyjamas as goosebumps leap onto her arms and legs, and slides into bed. All he can see is the top of her head.

"Not tired?" she asks.

"Wha'?"

"Come to bed."

When he's lying next to her he feels sleep and drink and drugs weighing down his eyelids. "What's your middle name?" he asks thickly.

"Hm?"

"What's your middle name, Granger?"

"Jean," she says, and he feels disappointed. Not Jane, he thinks, or Margaret. Angela or Moira or—"Why?" she asks.

"No reason."

"Draco," she says, opening her eyes and staring straight at him through the dark, "tell me now, or I'm spelling your mouth shut so I can go to sleep."

She would, too. "Your mum should have named you Wendy," he says.

She scoffs softly. "You're not a lost boy, Draco."

"What am I then?"

His holy Hermione presses herself against his chest, the crown of her head beneath his chin. He can feel her breathing. "Peter Pan," she says, winding an arm around his ribs, "but ever so much more."

* * *

She is human. Or rather, she was, until Remus comes knocking on her door three hours after she falls asleep, apologizing and asking for their latest tape. Her shuffling and grunting and groaning would make a zombie proud.

"Here," she says, handing it to him. "Tea?"

"No, no, not if you're—"

"Sit."

Single syllables today, at least until he's gone, but this does save her an owl. She flicks the kettle on and takes out two mugs, sets the sugar on the kitchen table and asks him if he takes milk. When they're seated, they stare into their cups.

"Dean Thomas is in the guest bedroom," she says after her first sip.

"What?"

"Dean Thomas. Draco and I went to London last night and found him. He's run away."

Remus drags a hand through his hair. There's a scar on his knuckles. "He's muggleborn."

"What's happening out there?" she asks and her voice is small with little sleep, eight and muggle and scared of the dark; thirteen and girlish and keeping secrets; eighteen and worried and worn.

"The Ministry is still pushing the fiction that signing up with the muggleborn registration will keep you safe. It's no different either way, except they can hunt you better," Remus explains. "Ted and I put extra enchantments on the house."

"If Dean doesn't want to stay here, is there anywhere we can send him?"

"Lee Jordan has half his flat covered in Weasley Wheezes traps. I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

They drink half their tea before there's noise on the stairs. Draco comes in wrapped in a blanket, looking like a homeless person with his eyes half-lidded and his shoulders hunched and his hair worse than Harry's. He looks at them and blinks slowly.

"Tonks throw you out?" he says.

"Please tell me you're wearing clothes under there, Mr Malfoy," Remus groans.

"Aw, come on Remus, don't be formal. We're family."

Remus looks ill. Hermione can't believe Draco is this chipper after hardly any sleep. He takes the chair next to hers and swipes a sip from her mug. She frowns at him, but her heart jumps; somehow that feels more intimate than sleeping next to him.

"Why are we awake?" Draco asks.

"I came for your tape, and," Remus coughs and sniffs and stares at the edge of the table. Grey hair and tired lines and scars that look like wrinkles on his face, but in that moment Hermione can't help but think that he looks like a little boy, "and to tell you that there's a taboo on You-Know-Who's name. That's how they're going to start tracking Order members and sympathizers, so watch what you say."

Draco nods, but Hermione wants to smack her head against the countertop. "Harry is going to get himself _killed_," she moans.

Upstairs, a door slams. Dean's awake.

* * *

Author's Note

I can't quite decide if Draco's just done a lot of muggle reading, or if JM Barrie is a wizard. I'm leaning towards the former.


	26. Chapter 26

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 26

"Professor Lupin?"

It's only just eleven AM and part of Draco doesn't want to admit to himself that the only reason he's awake is because he felt Hermione's absence. She tucked him in when she left, but warm blankets and warm girl are two very different things and suddenly he was blinking at her empty pillow. He isn't surprised that Remus is there, only annoyed that he couldn't wait until the afternoon like normal people. But then, with Tonks pregnant they would have hardly brought in the New Year in style.

"Please, Dean, I'm not your professor anymore," Remus says, bashful.

"What's going on?" Dean asks.

Hermione looks like she wants to drown in her tea. Draco winces sympathetically.

"We should write a manual," he says. "Scarpering for Seventh Years."

"That's discriminatory," Hermione says as she drags a hand across her closed eyes, "and inaccurate."

"Ditching the Dark Lord for Dummies?"

"Ugh."

He wonders how many times they'll have to go through this. It was just them, at first, understanding in their eyes and in the silences between sentences. Then there was Tonks, and her parents and husband, and now they're branching out from family and into something else. Now there's Ginny and Neville and Looney Luna Lovegood. Now there's Dean. How many others will they drag into Granger's kitchen before it's all over?

Hermione opens her mouth, but Draco beats her to it, summarizing and watching Dean's eyes widen and narrow in turns.

"I…that's…I just…" Dean coughs. "What?"

"Thomas, if I have to repeat myself…"

"Bite me, Malfoy."

"Do they teach manners in Gryffindor? Or does McGonagall just hope the other houses take pity on you?"

"Draco," Remus says sternly, like he'd take points off if he still could.

"You know, for a second there I thought you'd stopped being the slimy little racist you were in school. But you haven't changed, really, have you?" Dean's eyes flick in Hermione's direction. "I have no idea why she's with you."

I don't know either, Draco thinks, and feels sick. Why _is_ she with him? Pity? Lack of options? Last night she made so much sense, but in the sober light of day it all seems so confusing.

"_She_ is sitting right here," Hermione snaps. "And Dean, the fact that he's with me at all should say enough, but if you don't want to stay you have options."

Hermione tells him about Lee Jordan and Dean decides to go the next day, when Remus has had a chance to talk to Lee after tonight's broadcast. After Remus leaves, they eat breakfast and Dean goes back to bed. The second he's gone, Hermione kisses Draco straight on the mouth. She wriggles into his lap, pushing the blanket aside so cold air creeps through to his skin, but it doesn't matter. She's warm, soft and sweet and straddling his thighs, and he winds his arms around her until she's flush against his chest. Only two thin tops between them; his whole body heats like he's holding the sun.

"You're an idiot," she says when she pulls away, lips so close he's breathing in her breaths. He swears he can taste tea.

"I thought we'd established that."

She hugs him, and he can't decide if he wants to shag her or bury his face in her neck. He feels her lips brush his ear.

"Second star to the right," she whispers.

"And straight on 'till morning," he finishes.

"That's why I'm with you."

* * *

Maybe it's best that Dean is leaving, Hermione thinks. This way, she and Draco and keep shagging on the kitchen chairs.

She can't believe she did that. She has eaten at that table since she was a child, first in a high chair and then in a booster seat; has done her homework there and written letters to her friends. Now she's pushing clothes aside and rocking reassuringly in her boyfriend's lap, toes lifting off the tile and sweat beading in the places their bodies touch. The hands at her hips grip so hard it's like he's afraid she'll disapparate, so she threads her fingers through his hair and tugs and sucks and bites until there are welts like stamps across his throat. Hermione was here; she thinks she'll charm them later, to say that, and then he jerks beneath her and she doesn't think anything at all.

After, they bathe and dress and relocate into the dining room. The wireless is a low hum in the background, and will be until evening. She spends a lot of time thinking, and not all of it about horcruxes.

Once, after the Yule Ball, in a quiet moment in her dorm, she made a list of all the reasons why she was in love with Ron. He's loyal and funny and dependable; surprisingly sweet and easily flustered and she likes the way his ears turn red when he's mad. She likes his family. She likes his height. She can write whole essays, with footnotes about good genes and good upbringing and all the times he's saved her life. Ron Weasley: A Thesis. It's a good list, one she thinks may be at the bottom of her trunk along with last year's homework planner and a shrunken school robe.

She can't make a list for Draco.

She's tried, a few times, numbering her mental parchment but hardly gets through number one before she's distracted by the curve of his throat or a quirk of his lips; ruffled hair that needs taming or something he's said that demands attention. He's demanding, drawing her to him like a light-drunk moth, and that's about as far as she can articulate. There are no reasons for her and Draco, nothing verbal she can hand over every time someone asks. There is only feeling, thumping hearts and shallow breaths and tingling guts when the candlelight flickers across his face. Something bone-deep—_soul_-deep—that not even the best poets can name.

She never thought she would be pleased over the loss of words.

"So you're playing muggle music and stuff?" Dean asks after dinner, calmer after more sleep and two ibuprofen. Hermione stacks the dishes in the sink and turns the wireless up.

"Music, yes, and speeches and extracts from muggle literature. We agonized for days about what to use as the first broadcast of the year because it feels like it means _more_, you know, sets the tone, and I really hope everyone—"

Draco slaps a hand over her mouth. "It's starting," he mutters, and pulls her into the seat beside him.

The speech pops and crackles and some words are lost by the roar of a crowd, and while it is so specific that Hermione worries the message itself will be lost in the knowledge that Britain doesn't have a written constitution nor the red hills of Georgia, she hopes they are understood. Across from her, Dean's eyes go impossibly wide and she knows they will be.

_I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."_

* * *

Author's Note

The excerpt is from the speech delivered on August 28, 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.

Also, according to the internet, the UK doesn't have a single written constitution like the USA does. If I'm wrong, I welcome the correction.


	27. Chapter 27

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 27

A few days after Dean Thomas removes himself to Lee Jordan's flat, Draco wakes to the sound of Hermione panicking. He opens bleary eyes and watches her dart around the room in a t-shirt and knickers and thick socks, scribbling on parchment and leafing through books and trembling with he's not sure what. She's muttering under her breath.

"Granger?" he says, sitting up. She yanks a book off a shelf with one hand, the other holding something he can't see. "Granger? Grang—Hermione?"

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," she says.

"Hermione?"

"Oh god, oh god, oh—"

"HERMIONE."

She jumps and twirls round to look at him. She blinks owlishly. "Draco?" she whispers.

"What's going on?"

"Oh god."

He climbs out of bed, standing in front of her and sees tears hovering in her wide eyes. He hates whoever's done this to her. "Hermione, what's happening?"

"Luna wasn't on the train back to school," she tells him, holding out her hand and the gold galleon. "Ginny told me. They're saying Death Eaters kidnapped her."

Swearing softly, Draco pulls her towards him, rubbing her back and willing her shivering to stop. If rumor has it that Lovegood was taken by Death Eaters, then it's most likely true. With the Dark Lord in Hogwarts and the Ministry, why would they try to hide it?

"Everything is going to be okay," he says, wincing as soon as the words are out. "Tell Remus, and we'll figure something out."

Hermione nods and pulls back long enough to grab her wand and send a patronus. It floats out of the room and down the stairs, and he tightens his arms around her. "Do you think she's okay? Will they hurt her?" she asks.

He thinks about Charity Burbage, about Ollivander, about terror-stricken muggles and punished Death Eaters and Rowle writhing under his wand. He swallows thickly. "I don't know," he says, truthfully, "but it doesn't matter, because we are going to save her. Right?"

She looks him square in the eye, and her own are so fierce that he knows now why she was sorted into Gryffindor instead of Ravenclaw. "Right."

* * *

By noon, they're dressed and the house is full of family. She has a quill and piece of parchment on her lap and is writing down every word that's tossed out into the chill living room air. Her hand shakes a little as she writes. She wonders if Luna would have been any safer if she hadn't made friends with Hermione and the others.

"Do we know where she might have been taken?" Remus asks.

"There are holding cells at the Ministry for criminals awaiting transfer to Azkaban," Tonks says. "And there's Azkaban itself. You-Know-Who has complete control over it, it's why…" her eyes flick in Draco's direction, "why it's empty."

"Would they really put her in Azkaban?" Hermione asks.

"The Dark Lord doesn't care if you're sixteen or sixty, Miss Granger," Andromeda says. "Strategically, Azkaban is a good piece of property to have a hold of. Even without Dementors, it is still extremely difficult to escape from."

"The Ministry or Azkaban are the most logical places," Draco says, staring at the carpet. "It's unlikely that the Dark Lord would want to keep an eye on her himself."

"What do you mean?" Tonks asks.

Draco takes a deep, shaky breath, and something inside Hermione's chest squeezes. Surreptitiously, she touches her fingers to his bent back. "Ollivander is in the dungeons of the Manor," he tells them.

This, Hermione thinks, is what getting punched in the gut feels like.

They stare at him, so long that he starts to squirm. Eventually, Remus drags his hands over his face and slumps in his chair. "Why didn't you say anything before?"

"I…I don't…" Draco coughs. "I'm not even sure he's still alive. The Dark Lord…wanted him for something."

Every dream Harry has had since the summer swims through her brain, every vision about Ollivander's torture over wand lore, and Hermione's fingers dig into Draco's skin.

Remus pushes himself out of his chair. "I'm going to talk to Kingsley about this, see if he can find out where Luna is being kept, then I'll go talk to Xenophilius before he does anything rash."

They nod and after brushing a kiss across Tonks' mouth, he's gone. The living room is silent, and Hermione plays with the corner of her parchment. He's never mentioned Ollivander, not once since they met in London. A voice that sounds horribly like Ron's whispers about what else he could be hiding, about trust and betrayal and blood being so much thicker, and her stomach roils. Does he not trust her enough? Or is it something that seems both worse than that and, sickly, much better; did he think Ollivander was expendable?

"I'm sorry," Draco mutters. In a chair beside him, Andromeda scoffs. He lifts his head and blinks at her. "What?" he asks.

"Remus is a Gryffindor," Andromeda states, like that should explain everything, and in a way it does. "They think in absolutes. No offense," she adds in Hermione's direction.

"None taken," Hermione mutters.

"It doesn't matter when you remembered Mr Ollivander or when you told someone; your actions are the same either way."

Nothing, the rational part of Hermione's mind whispers, he can do nothing, and the same was true back in the autumn when he first ran. It was better, strategically, for him to run with nothing but his knowledge than rushing back to liberate his parents and the people being kept underneath the Manor's floorboards. That's all war is, really: strategy. She always knew the films had it wrong, but she never thought it was this much; war is not frenzied action, it's waiting and waiting and waiting and hoping to higher beings that the tiny things you can do amount to something. Most of the time, your hands are tied.

"And if Himself needs information, it's likely Ollivander is still alive," Ted says, stretching and rolling his shoulders. "So, do we know what he's needed for?"

Hermione's fingers curl around their quill and Draco's jumper. "Uh…yeah."

"What?" Draco says.

"Harry has been…You-Know-Who is after a wand—a specific wand. I don't know whose, or much about wandlore, frankly, but he's obsessed with it."

"And how do you know that?"

She looks at him, at the lines around his eyes and the pale rings of his irises. You know why, she whispers to him in her head, I've told you why before. After a minute, Draco groans.

"Potter's life just gets better and better, doesn't it?" he mutters.

"You know, I was just complaining to Dromeda about how bored I've been, stuck in the house all the time," Ted says. His wife rolls her eyes. "But wandlore…I can do that."


	28. Chapter 28

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 28

Shortly after, his aunt and uncle and cousin leave, and the second they're gone and the kitchen door is shut, Hermione turns on him. He has never seen her so furious.

"I'm sorry," he says, quickly, swallowing back something that feels like sick but tastes like dread.

"Bullshit," she snaps. "When were you going to tell me? No, _why_ didn't you tell me?"

"I—"

"You forgot, didn't you? An innocent man is being tortured in your house and you _fucking forgot_."

"That's not—"

"We could have saved him, Draco! For all we know, it could be too late, and it's all your fault!"

"Hey, don't put all of this on me. I was…I didn't even know he was there until the summer. A year—he had been there a fucking _year_, and I didn't know! And when I did, I couldn't do _anything_."

"But then you had me, and _we could have saved him_." He feels himself go cold; had her, like he doesn't anymore. "Don't you trust me?"

"Yes, I do."

He trusts her with his life. When they first met she could have dragged him to the Order but instead she took him home, like he believed so fiercely she would. He trusts her every day not to hex him when his back is turned or slit his throat in his sleep; he trusts her not to laugh at him or belittle his worries or stomp on the heart he's slipping piece by piece into her palms. It's the most important thing he's ever done.

"Not enough."

She looks so hurt—wounded—like she's a child he just told that Father Christmas isn't real. Standing there with goosbumps crawling up his arms he feels like he's losing something, and he's terrified.

"What do you want to know?" he asks, his voice a whisper. "You know…everything, absolutely everything, most of it without me even having to say. You know what happened in sixth year, you know my father was put in prison and that the Dark Lord is in my house. Professor Burbage is dead, did I mention that? Or what about that I tortured Thorfin Rowle, or that my father is wandless or that my mother prays when she thinks no one is listening or that the Death Eaters kill our house elves for sport? What about that I've thought of Ollivander every _fucking_ day since I left, too terrified to save him, and scared to tell you because I…I can't…"

Hermione looks ill. "Draco," she breathes.

He can't lose her. He feels lightheaded, and when he sways she wraps her arms around him.

* * *

For a minute, face hot and chest swollen with righteous indignation, she felt almost like her old self, like she was standing in the common room gearing up for an argument with Ron. It felt good, comfortable and relaxing and the antithesis of the girl she has become who is so wrung out and weary. Then Draco started speaking and her anger shriveled like a spent balloon. When she hugs him she can feel him trembling and the space between her breasts aches.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles into his jumper.

"I should have told you, first thing. I should have told you everything."

She sighs. "Andromeda's right, though; it's not like we could have done much. We still can't. It would be suicide to go when You-Know-Who's there."

"There are anti-apparition wards on the dungeons. And other enchantments."

"See?"

He shifts in her arms, face pressing into her neck. His lips tickle when he speaks. "I do trust you, you know."

"I know," she says. "And I trust you too."

It's the truth.


	29. Chapter 29

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 29

When Remus arrives at the house just over the hill, he finds Xenophilius Lovegood sitting under his kitchen table, chewing on the sleeve of his robe. Remus coaxes him out with tea and paltry promises, and gets Molly Weasley to visit every lunchtime. For the Order, he tells her, we can't have him trying to get Luna on his own. Blessedly, Molly doesn't ask many questions, because that's just what Draco needs: Mrs Weasel breathing down his neck.

"I hate wandlore!"

Heaven help him when the war is over, and all those ginger Mustelidae discover that Hermione has ditched Ron for him.

"You don't hate anything," Draco says, peering over Hermione's shoulder, "especially if it's in a book."

"Well, I hate this," she grumbles. Across from her, face buried in his own tomb, Uncle Ted snickers.

Aunt Andromeda smuggled some books out of her family home when she did a bunk, and has ventured out into Diagon Alley in the days since her husband has decided to become a war-time researcher. In total, they have six books on wandlore. Draco thinks they're completely screwed.

"Be nice, Ted," Andromeda admonishes, walking into the dining room with a plate of biscuits and a casually cast warming charm.

"This is useless," Hermione says. "Even with the information we have…people study wandlore for _years_, they _specialize_ in it, and even after all of that no one is as good as the man sitting in your basement."

"Dungeon, Granger," he corrects. "Basements are for plebs."

She smacks him and swipes a biscuit, and he drops a hand to the back of her neck to rub at the bunched muscles he finds there. He thinks Aunt Andromeda is smiling at them. He also thinks he likes it.

"My point is," Hermione continues, "that all we know is that You-Know-Who is after a powerful wand, one apparently so important that he has kidnapped Mr Ollivander, and interrogated both Gregorovitch _and_ Gellert Grindelwald. A wand is suited to the wizard or witch; why, then, would You-Know-Who want another one?"

"Having been resurrected, it could be that his previous wand is not as perfect a fit for him as it once was," Andromeda supposes. "He can't simply purchase a new one."

"Is he forcing Ollivander to make him a new wand, then?" Draco asks.

"I don't think so. From what Harry's told me, You-Know-Who's wand has worked fine except when dueling Harry. Their wand cores are identical. Duelling causes Priori Incantatem," Hermione says.

A memory shivers across Draco's brain and down his spine, and Hermione touches his hand. His hands have clenched, his fingers gripping her shoulder. Swallowing hard, he rubs apologetically at her jumper.

"He told us, in the summer," he says, mouth sandy. "He said he couldn't defeat Potter if he used his own wand so he…he took my father's wand."

"And it was destroyed," Hermione says.

"Yeah."

And then Draco left him all alone.

* * *

For the millionth time since this war started, Hermione wonders if there's a wizarding psychiatrist. She's never heard of one, but she knows that when all this is over they are most certainly going to need therapy.

"He's fine," she says. "I'm sure he is."

"Miss Granger is right, Draco. The Malfoy's are survivors, above all else, and they will most assuredly see the end of this war. Lucius will not be taken down in his own house," Andromeda says.

Draco nods, but Hermione thinks he doesn't quite believe them. She wishes there was some way to get a message to his parents, but knows that both owl and patronus would be far too conspicuous. She squeezes his hand tight.

"We need more books, 'Dromeda," Ted announces, and Hermione sighs with relief.

"I'm wary of making too many trips to Flourish and Blotts. I look so much like my sister that everyone watches me," Andromeda says.

"I can order more," Hermione suggests, "but I'd prefer access to a proper library. A properly _dark_ library."

"The darkest libraries are Death Eater libraries, Granger," Draco mutters.

"And headquarters."

Oh fuck.

"What?" Draco says, and Hermione can feel her face burning like a traffic light.

"Um…Order…headquarters…uh…" She stares at her lap.

"Neither my daughter or son-in-law have divulged the location of Order headquarters, even after Headmaster Dumbledore's death and the nigh disbandment of the Order. And while your loyalty is admirable, Miss Granger, it may not be prudent," Andromeda tells her, and she can feel the weight of a pureblood dynasty in every syllable.

"It's just…it might not be safe. Harry, Ron and I stayed there for a month, but were found out. It could be crawling with Death Eaters, since Yaxley knows its location and can get past the Fidelius Charm," she explains.

"There are ways to go there safely, Miss Granger."

It's not exactly a secret anymore, she thinks, the Charm useless and the whole house probably sacked by Death Eaters in the months since she was last there. There's nothing there she needs to keep.

"It's Number 12 Grimmauld Place," she says.

She wonders if Andromeda and Draco notice they're standing straighter.

Andromeda smiles. "Well, nephew, I think it's time we pay a visit to your Great Aunt Walburga's."

* * *

Author's Note

As you've probably guessed, I love the Black family.


	30. Chapter 30

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 30

Before they go to Grimmauld Place, Hermione has the two of them practising spells into the wee hours of the morning, certain that they'll meet Death Eaters. Aunt Andromeda assured them that there are ways to strengthen old family wards, to reject anything not of Black blood or marriage or friendship, but Draco knows Hermione feels better flicking her wand at cushions. He wonders how many times you can Reparo something before it starts coming apart at the seams.

"We'll apparate into the park across the road, and I'll adjust the wards. I doubt Sirius thought to do so after he made the house into Order headquarters, which was extremely foolish. Spies can be ferreted out so much easier this way," Andromeda tells them over strong coffee Hermione's broke out especially. Draco drinks deeply; he's only had four hours of sleep.

"What happens when someone is expelled from the house?" Hermione asks.

"They are magically transported to Hyde Park. It's remained undeveloped for centuries, and won't garner unwanted muggle attention like spitting them into the street would."

Hermione nods, gnawing on her lower lip. Draco's not sure if he should find that irritating or arousing. Christ, it's too early for higher thought.

It's just the four of them, he and Hermione and Aunt Andromeda and Uncle Ted. Remus and Tonks were told last night, kicked up a fuss about the danger and the illogic and suggested sending Tonks into the Ministry to use their library before Andromeda put her foot down. Draco's forgot, in the weeks since he met her for the first time, that while she is sweeter and kinder, wiser and saner, she is still Bellatrix's sister, and just as dangerous as any of them.

He's a little surprised at how fiercely proud he is that Andromeda is his aunt.

"Once we're in the house, we should be safe. Even if anyone comes back they won't be let in. The house may have past to Sirius, but it's been left largely unclaimed. I can fine tune the wards to accept me as their master, at least for a little while," his aunt finishes.

After coffee, they sneak into Hermione's back garden and apparate, their hands clasped and their heads down, diving behind shrubbery as soon as they're across from Number 12. Draco can see the house clearly, dingy and unkempt in comparison to the ones beside it. He feels a twinge of something that might be guilt or shame or embarrassment, at his cousin having lived here.

Beside him, there's soft whispering. Andromeda is adjusting the wards.

"How will we know it's worked?" Hermione hisses.

"Aunt Andromeda will be able to feel it, like a tickle at the back of her brain," he whispers back. "Excellent burglar alarm."

Turning, he watches his aunt squatting still as stone. The weak sunlight casts shadows across her face and hair, and Draco feels his stomach clench. She looks a little like his mother. Suddenly, she rises and strides towards Number 12's front stoop. Wands drawn, they follow.

The inside of the house is dark, musty-smelling and rotting. Paper is peeling from the walls and the floor is filthy and it is silent, so silent, until Uncle Ted closes the door.

"FILTH. STAINS OF DISHONOUR. DESECRATORS OF THE ANCIENT HOUSE OF BLACK."

Draco jumps. "What the hell?"

"Oh _Merlin_," Hermione sighs.

Briskly, Andromeda pulls back the curtains on the largest portrait in the front hall. A pale, twisted face glares back at them.

"Hello, aunt," Andromeda says.

If it was possible, the portrait's face darkens. "Blood traitor," it spits.

"I'm pleased that you're doing so well in your post-mortem." Andromeda smiles. Draco shivers. "I wonder, have you met your nephew? Draco, come and greet your Aunt Walburga."

He doesn't remember her, although his mother has told him she came to visit once or twice before her death when he was five. Looking at her now, steel hair and pinched mouth and viper's tongue, he hopes he spit up on her.

"I don't want to see any of your filthy half-blood brats," Walburga sneers.

"Nymphadora is my only child, aunt," Andromeda corrects. "This is my sister Narcissa's son. The last Black boy."

Walburga leans forward in her chair, a smile that makes Draco sick spreading across her face. "Narcissa's son. Now I remember: little Draco. You're the spitting image of your father."

He stares at her.

"Nothing to say to your aunt, young Malfoy? No explanation for why you have chosen to debase yourself by associating with my traitorous niece?"

Draco feels his wand hand twitch.

"I know you're not mute boy, even if I hadn't heard your foul language earlier you never shut up as a child." Her face turns foul again, as swift as a storm blowing in. "Or have you become another blood traitor as well, a blight on our proud pureblood lineage. If I was able I would disown you like I did your cousin."

"Your son," he whispers, although he isn't sure why.

"That vile turncoat is not my son."

"Sirius was not a turncoat," Hermione snaps. "No more than Regulus was."

"Regulus was—"

"Killed trying to defeat You-Know-Who. Your family isn't as _loyal to the cause_ as you might think."

If Walburga were alive, Draco thinks Hermione would be a stain on the hall carpet. "You filthy Mudblood! You disgusting little Mud—"

Quickly, Draco grabs Hermione's wand and points it between his aunt's painted eyes. She stares at him with something like disappointment and sighs heavily.

"How far you have fallen," she says, "for the sake of a muggle's fickle heart. She has poisoned your mind."

"My mind is my own," he says, voice still a whisper but now he knows why. "And Hermione is as much a witch as I am a wizard. Defodio!"

For a minute, he could have sworn she spoke in his father's voice.


	31. Chapter 31

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 31

A massive gash crosses the chest of Walburga Black's portrait, and Draco, Hermione's wand still clutched in his hand, is standing on the stairs.

"Where's the library, Granger?" he asks impatiently, staring pointedly into her face and not at his shocked great aunt.

"Um…second floor," she says.

He heads up the stairs and she moves to go after him, but only gets to the first step before Andromeda is calling her name.

"Miss Granger, is it true…about Regulus?" she asks, as tremulous as a little girl. Hermione almost cries.

"Yes, it is."

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Andromeda grab her husband's hand.

Upstairs, Draco is stalking from room to room, throwing open doors and muttering under his breath and she hopes that when he finally reaches the library that he leaves all the books intact. Eventually he gets to the end of the hall, and the library, wrenching the door open and storming inside. She follows, and finds him running his eyes over book spines.

"We're going to need Aunt Andromeda and Uncle Ted's help getting some of these out of here. And some you may not be able to touch," he says.

"Why?"

"Blood recognition; old and fucked up and able to tell that you're muggleborn."

She remembers coming in here back in fifth year, attempting to clean cobwebs from the corners of the bookshelves and magic the dust from the rug. The books are behind glass, bound in dark leathers, some so old that their titles have faded to the point of being unrecognizable. Draco's staring at one that starts with a 'B', or maybe a 'D', she can't tell. She threads her fingers through his.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

He swallows convulsively, like there are too many words caught in his throat. "I'm sorry, about before. All the times I called you a…that name…I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"Fuck, it's not. But I'm sorry. I'm sorry for my whole fucked up family. At least, the ones that weren't disowned."

She turns, pressing her nose to his arm. He smells like laundry soap and scared boy. "You don't say it anymore, that's the important thing. And I like your fucked up, disowned family."

He chuckles and pulls her to him, warm and too thin and she feels calmer than she has for days. She closes her eyes.

"You are one strange girl, Granger," he murmurs.

"Says something about you liking me, then, doesn't it?"

He laughs and she can feel it, in her belly and chest and where her nose is tucked against the skin of his throat. "Yeah, it does."

There are footsteps in the hall, and reluctantly they separate. Andromeda and Ted enter, the former with red-rimmed eyes that focus immediately on Draco. They look at each other for a long time, and Hermione can hardly breathe.

"Draco and I will sort through the texts," Andromeda announces, "for the ones that Ted and Miss Granger can handle. When that's done, we'll look through them to see if they contain any information not only pertinent to wandlore, but to the war as a whole."

They take their positions, Hermione and Ted at a table and Draco and Andromeda at the bookcase. It's slow work, silent except for the muttering of spells and the whisper of turned pages. Hermione finds an old quill and a piece of parchment with a half-finished game of hang man scrawled in one corner, and tears it into strips for labelling. Horcruxes. Wandlore. Blood magic. Death magic. Parseltongue. She slips them just inside the covers, and stacks each book in neat little piles.

Across the room, Andromeda and Draco start whispering.


	32. Chapter 32

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 32

"I'm proud of you," Andromeda says suddenly, voice low but sounding so loud in the quiet. She waves her wand over a book before handing it to her husband.

"What?" Draco asks.

"I'm proud of you."

"Why?"

She plucks another book from the shelf, one with a cover that looks like black snakeskin. "I never met you before December, as you know. But I'd met your father and spent my childhood, such as it was, with your mother, and sometimes I wondered what you would be like. Morbid curiosity, you could call it, since I was certain I'd never speak to you." She flicks her wand a few times, frowning, before giving Hermione the book. She takes another. "When Nymphadora took the Order children to Kings Cross, she told me she saw you and your father on the platform. Cold and spoiled and none of your peers had a single good word to say about you, and it was horribly how I had imagined but never wanted you to be."

"Why?"

"My sister is a Black, completely, the pureblood prig in public and hardly any better at home. She was doted on, as the youngest, but I…knew her, better than Bellatrix did, I think. She had an amazing capacity for kindness, when she thought it deserved, and a great love for her family. I didn't want to believe that those qualities would have been quashed by Lucius' cruelty."

He nods.

"No matter what I hoped, however, I never believed you would have turned your back on your father and the Dark Lord. Any second thoughts, if you had them, would have been well-hidden and played upon only to secure your own safety." The book she's holding wails, and Andromeda snaps her wand at it before setting it aside; unsafe for muggleborn hands. "Slytherin to the last."

"I thought about…but then I—"

"But then my daughter comes home one day and tells me that you and Miss Granger have formed your own resistance, that you've left the manor and have lived in muggle London, and I knew that I was wrong about you. We all were. And for that I have never been happier."

He swallows tightly and feels something horribly like tears prickling the back of his eyes. His parents have been proud of him, sometimes, when he made prefect in fifth year and did well on his OWLs. His father sent him a letter that summer, a reply to one his mother sent full of praise but at the same time full of fear. He thinks he saw pride in his father's eyes when he came back home, fresh from prison and with a son still living. He wonders if they would be proud now. None of that, however, has meant as much as Aunt Andromeda's simple sentence.

"Thank you," he whispers.

Dropping a book at her feet, Andromeda squeezes his hand.

"Sorry, but…Draco, are you done with that or are you stuck to the cover with a sticking charm?" Hermione asks, looking at the book he's been holding for the past five minutes.

He coughs and hopes he isn't doing something stupid, like blushing. "Here," he says and shoves it into her hand.

"Thank you."

She flicks open the cover and the table of contents and then slides a strip of parchment between the pages. "I'm sorry…are you _labelling_?" he says.

"Yes."

"Merlin you're anal."

"There's no harm in being orderly. And I wouldn't even need to do it this way if _someone_ wasn't too paranoid to use his own wand."

"Hey, I come by my paranoia honestly."

"Our family _is_ known for it," Andromeda comments.

"That isn't quite what I meant, but it works just as well, thank you. See Granger: wand tracking charms and natural-born paranoia; honest."

"One of the few things that is."

She smiles cheekily, snapping the book shut and setting it down on one of her piles. Beside her, Ted sniggers.

"I'm wounded," Draco sniffs.

"No you're not."

"You're right, I'm not."

* * *

Draco whips another book off the shelf, smiling filthily at her, and something shivers inside Hermione's stomach. It takes them the rest of the day and into the night to finish sorting through the books, creating yet another pile that she calls "Rejects" and Draco calls "As useless as one of Hagrid's textbooks". She hits him for it. His family laughs. They put the ones they're taking into Hermione's beaded bag and, when the sun is gone and the corridors are black, they make for home.

"Lumos," Draco mutters, lighting her wand and illuminating the striped wallpaper and horrible house elf heads.

"Wait, where's Kreacher?" Hermione asks.

"Who?"

"He's still alive?" Andromeda says.

"He's…rather foul, and a bit mad after being left on his own for years, but he was here when Harry, Ron and I used the house during the summer. I thought he still would be," Hermione explains.

"Kreacher!" Andromeda calls, but there is nothing; the house is still.

"Kreacher?" Draco attempts.

For a minute, Hermione thinks she can hear something rustling, a dirty pillowcase whispering against a doorjamb, but no one appears and she decides she just imagined it.

"If he is here at all, he would only answer to the owner of this house, and most certainly not to two blood traitors," Andromeda says.

"But he worked with Draco's mother during fifth year," Hermione tells her.

"Narcissa has not been disowned, as I have. If Kreacher is as loyal to Aunt Walburga's painting as he was to her in life, then he knows not to answer Draco's call, either."

For the most part, Hermione has tried very hard not to think about what will come after; after war, after victory, after defeat. It's too terrible to imagine her friends dead or disfigured, of what could happen if they don't succeed and Harry falls and doesn't get back up again. Now, standing in the Black house, she thinks of Draco's future. He has been so beautiful, but no matter which way the war ends it might not matter; damned either way. For a second she wishes she had left him squatting in London, and it hurts.

"Granger," Draco touches her arm, "let's go home."

The curtains on Walburga Black's portrait are still open when they leave. She doesn't say a word.


	33. Chapter 33

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 33

Hermione and Uncle Ted divide the books between them and talk about their findings during bi-weekly meetings (or whenever one of them has a breakthrough, whichever comes first). At the end of January Ted is going over Hermione's notes on parseltongue when he asks why they need to know it.

"Nagini, You-Know-Who's snake, is one of his horcruxes, and one of the most difficult," Hermione says. In the sitting room, everyone stills, Tonks setting down her fruit plate on top of Remus' sheaves of parchment and Aunt Andromeda pausing mid-page turn. Draco can hardly hear anyone breathe.

"What are the other difficult ones?" Ted asks slowly.

"The diadem is tricky, because the Room of Requirement is so large. And…" Hermione looks at her lap, and the floor, and finally at Draco. She looks terrified. He takes her hand.

"And?"

"Harry. Harry is the final horcrux."

Somehow, it's more real when it's not just the two of them who know.

"What?" Remus croaks.

"When You-Know-Who tried to kill him as a baby, I think…I believe…" Hermione sniffs; her fingers tighten around his. "He made Harry a horcrux, that's why his scar hurts and he can see into You-Know-Who's mind, and I don't think he even knows he's done it but he has, and…we can't win if one of the horcrux's is still out there."

"You mean if Harry's still alive," Remus says.

She's crying, softly. "Yes."

Remus shoots to his feet, running a hand through his hair and turning on the spot before going into the dining room. There's a thump—a fist against drywall. Hermione cries harder. Ted is pale and Tonks is trembling and Draco meets his aunt's eyes. She looks like Bellatrix, then; thin and ghostly fair and hair so, so dark. Her eyes are wide and round like an infants. She looks small, suddenly, and it scares him.

"We're not going to let him die," Remus says when he comes back, the skin on his knuckles broken.

"What?" Hermione gasps.

"Harry is not going to die. He _can't_, and we won't let him."

"I don't think there's anything we can do."

"_I won't let him die_." He's panting, eyes wild and hair tousled and every muscle taut, and for the first time Draco sees the werewolf in his cousin's husband. "I…he's James and Lily's son, and I'm the only one left, and _I won't let him die_."

Draco has envied Harry Potter a lot of things; easy fame, the way teachers praised him, and the super-human ability to catch the snitch every single goddamn time. But never has he envied Potter his family, because while Potter lived with muggles Draco had a mother and father and grandparents and house elves and sometimes that was the only thing that made sitting in the same room as the Boy-Who-Lived bearable. Potter doesn't have parents, but now Draco envies him for having Remus; for having so many people horrified at the thought of losing him. He wonders, horribly, selfishly, if they would be so worried if Draco was in Potter's place.

"We need to find out how a horcrux works," he says, voice cracking embarrassingly. "Hermione and I haven't been paying attention to anything that isn't destroying them, but maybe if we know how they're made, what they do to the…host…then maybe we can do something."

Remus presses his lips together, nodding stiffly. "Okay."

When he goes to get more books, Hermione follows.

* * *

In the dining room, she watches as Draco stacks all their well-thumbed tomes into a neat pile. The light is dim, casting shadows across his face and throat and the weary slump of his shoulders. His hair is uncombed. She can see the bones in his wrists. He is so beautiful she feels like crying all over again.

"I—" she starts and he looks up, eyes catching hers in a way that steals her breath. I'm falling in love with you, she thinks, heart stuttering, and suddenly she's across the room, hands on his neck and lips pushing against his. He touches the small of her back and she whimpers into his mouth. "You…I…you are…"

"If I knew being nice to Potter would make you speechless, I would have done it ages ago," he says, smiling. "His Potions mark would have been much higher."

"Shut up," she says wetly.

He cradles her face in his hands, thumbs sweeping across her cheeks. "I'm going to say something and I want you to repeat after me, okay?"

She nods.

"We're going to save Harry Potter."

She swallows thickly. "We're going to save Harry Potter."

"Again."

"We're going to save Harry Potter."

"Do it again."

"We're going to save Harry."

He releases her, stacking more books and flipping through loose sheets of parchment. He levitates it all with her wand and directs it back towards the sitting room. He smacks her bum on the way. "Look lively, Granger."

"Draco—"

He pauses in the doorway, wand aloft and one book knocking against the wall. "It's not a lie, Hermione," he says.

She hopes to god he's right.

* * *

Author's Note

This chapter gave me terrible trouble, which is why it has taken so long. It was also rather surprising, but then that happens with characters like these. The next few chapters should come along much quicker. Thank you for your patience.


	34. Chapter 34

The Disillusionment of Draco Malfoy

(and His Accomplice Hermione Granger)

Chapter 34

Their meetings become weekly. They get more books through friends and old co-workers, anyone that can be trusted, at least with the barest details, and make schedules so as to devote as much time as possible to each subject. Hermione is thrilled. Remus spends so much time in the Granger sitting room that he starts keeping a set of clothes under the sofa.

Dean joins them at the beginning of February, helping them find pieces for broadcasts on the wireless and then, curious and too observant for his own good, Lee Jordan starts accompanying him. It's not a huge surprise that by mid-month Draco finds himself being stared down by two gingers in hideous jumpers. Poor they may be, but they're hardly stupid. He stares back at them unflinchingly.

"You know, we could—" says one of them.

"No," says the other.

"What about—"

"Not tested."

"But what about the—"

"No antidote."

"What the hell are you two _doing_?" Hermione asks, walking into the kitchen where Draco's been cornered. He's supposed to be making tea.

"Trying to think of a suitable way to make sure Malfoy here won't squeal on us," one of the twins says.

"We can't think of anything that won't kill him…eventually." They both grin. Draco almost wants to squirm.

"Oh honestly," Hermione scoffs, stepping around them and filling the kettle, flicking her wand and setting the mugs and teabags and milk sorting themselves out. "All of this was his idea too. What makes you think he would go running to the Death Eaters?"

"He's a slimy git."

"Fred, he is in as much danger as we are, _so stop bothering him and go back into the living room and be useful_."

Fred, the one with the 'G' knitted on the front of his jumper, mutters an apology and shuffles out. George follows behind. When they're gone, Hermione slides her arms around him and drops her forehead to his shoulder. He can feel her whole body sag against his.

"They are exhausting," she mutters.

"I was handling them all right on my own, you know," he says, running the palm of his hand up her spine.

"I know, but I just…I am so tired."

He nods, her hair tickling his face. It seems like that's all they've been doing lately, explaining themselves; explaining, and defending him, and he really wishes she didn't have to. Sometimes, he wishes he could go back to when he was sixteen and scared and make a different choice. Maybe then, he wouldn't make her sigh so much.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Hermione snorts. "It's not your fault." She lifts her head, staring at him with circles under her eyes and cheekbones startlingly sharp. She kisses him. "None of us are at fault. That's the Dark Lord's jurisdiction."

There's a click. The water is boiled. Draco sniffs and pulls away. "Thanks," he says.

"You're welcome."

"You're my knight in shining armor."

"Shut up."

"Next time my life is threatened by ginger weasels, I'll call you—"

"_Draco_."

"—my gallant Gryffindor."

She tries to kick him; she misses.

* * *

It's getting crowded in her house. Fred and George are whispering furiously to Remus who looks bemused, and she can only imagine what they're saying. They're clever and persistent and weaseled out where their friend and his new flatmate where taking off to every week in no time, and she should be pleased about the extra help; should be, if they weren't so annoying. She passes out mugs of tea and sits next to Draco on the sofa. Pointedly. She is so fucking _sick_ of this.

"Have you heard from Ginny since the holidays ended?" Tonks asks, and Hermione smiles at her.

"Just a couple of times; she said she and Neville have started doing more research into the Room of Requirement to see if they could just ask it to give them the diadem. It would save time, after all. If that doesn't work, they're forming backup plans to sneak in and look for it without getting caught by the Carrows," she explains.

"And they know what it looks like?" asks Dean.

"I've given them the names of books to look in, but they're thinking of asking Cho Chang if she can give them any more information. She's a Ravenclaw, maybe she knows something."

"What about the other horcrux?" Lee asks.

"The Dark Lord moves, so unless we can find a way to track him, or get lucky and catch him at the Manor, we can't really do anything about the snake," Draco says.

"What if we send you in?" George suggests. "You can spy at the Manor for us."

Draco lets out a short, bitter laugh. "I deserted them months ago, Weasley. I'd be killed on sight."

Something inside her lurches sickeningly, and she threads her fingers through his own. Around them, Andromeda pales and Tonks squirms and even Remus ducks his head. She wonders if Draco notices that his family—his extended family—does not want him to die.

"Shit," Fred whispers.

"What about wandlore?" Remus asks.

"Still working on it," Ted says, wiping his mouth. "What about Miss Lovegood?"

"Kingsley is still looking. He can't ask any direct questions, and so much of the auror department is infected by Death Eaters and Dark Lord sympathizers that…" Remus rubs a hand over his eyes, "it's _hard_."

The room goes quiet, everyone sipping their tea and staring everywhere but at each other. Dean coughs. "Uh, so, I was thinking…well, that is, I—"

"Spit it out, Thomas," Draco says.

"There are others out there, like us," Dean says, "muggleborns and Potter sympathizers and magical creatures, all of them with nowhere to go. What if we gave them one?"

"What are you saying?" Hermione asks.

"I mean…what if we found them, and took them in? I was starving on my own, and I can't be the only one. And a resistance, it needs as many people as it can get, right?"

Beside her, she can feel Draco recoiling at that word: resistance. But at the same time his body turns to steel. It's still about his family, she knows, his parents pressed hard under Voldemort's thumb—like when they first met all of those weeks ago. But now it's about more, more family and friends and peace and equality, and more people means more brains, more help to have this all end like he so dearly wants. Vive la résistance.


End file.
